Play Dead
by snarryvader81
Summary: RE0/1/2/3 AU Instead of just infecting the Management Training Facility and the Mansion, Marcus infects all of Raccoon City. With chaos rapidly spreading, soon everyone, even Wesker, will find themselves struggling to survive and escape. Wesker/Chris yaoi
1. A Place Called Hate

James Marcus had never really had any problems with murder.

Of course, he hadn't truly considered it _murder_, not _homicide_, just _experimentation_, necessary sacrifices for the sake of his research, and for the sake of science itself. There were so many discoveries he wouldn't have been able to make without the use of human test subjects, and if they happened to scream and beg for their lives just before the end—well, that hadn't disturbed him. His leeches had soon put an end to it, and it never haunted him, not the sounds they made or even the looks on their faces, the desperate pleading in their eyes.

Marcus was a scientific man, and much like his profession, he was cold and precise, not prone to feeling large amounts of emotion.

But that didn't mean he _couldn't_ feel, _couldn't_ be pained or afraid or devastated as he lay there on the floor in a growing pool of his own blood, his vision blurry and his body in agony and his protégés standing above him, the glaring florescent light of the room giving their blond heads halos.

"Time to die, Doctor," said Wesker, briefly struggling and ultimately failing to keep the smirk off of his face. Marcus could see his own reflection in the man's sunglasses, see the blood leaking out of his mouth, the shattered glass glinting darkly around his head.

"Don't worry," said Birkin, an excited, almost childish lilt to his voice, "_I_ will take over your research."

Then, he laughed. It was subtle at first, a slight shaking of his chest that eventually grew until the sound was loud and lively and deliriously happy and had spread over to Wesker, who had his head thrown back and his mouth open.

Laughing.

He was dying, the life slowly seeping out of him onto the sterilized floor of his laboratory, and Wesker and Birkin, his protégés, his favorites, his assistants, the only two people he had actually _trusted_, were _laughing_ at him like they found it _funny_.

He almost couldn't understand it, couldn't get that rapidly fading mind of his to fully process the extent of the betrayal. That was why he called for them one last time, using the last of his strength to raise his hand towards them in a desperate plea.

_help me help me help me something anything I don't want to die_

But Wesker and Birkin were now looking at each other, their smug expressions perfectly mirroring one another's. His hand remained for only a moment, trembling faintly, before he lost all feeling and it fell back to his chest to soak in his own blood.

Things faded quickly after that, darkness encroaching into his vision as his heart slowed and finally stopped beating, his lungs ceasing to draw in air, his body failing to function any longer.

He died to the piercing, wild sound of their laughter.

And ten long, long years later, as he crawled out of a filthy pool of water past half-rotted corpses and up onto a cold metal grating, shivering and confused, it would still be ringing his ears, clawing its way into the deepest part of his soul and sowing the seeds of spectacular, bloody retribution in his mind.

.

.

Author's Note: Why can I NEVER make a prologue that's over five hundred or so words? I can ramble for five thousand later on but the first chapter is ALWAYS short.

Anyway, the basic premise of the story is that Marcus triggers the Raccoon City Outbreak months before anyone has a chance to go in and shoot up Birkin, and even before Wesker leads the S.T.A.R.S. into the Mansion, which should put him in a bit of a tricky situation when he's holed up in the police station with the real cops when the zombies start beating on the windows.

I have no real idea where I'm going with it, though there will definitely be appearances from all the Resident Evil 0/1/2/3/Umbrella Chronicles characters, like Billy, Leon, Claire, Sherry, Sergei etc. Though, as with most of my Resident Evil stuff, it's probably going to focus a lot on Wesker and Chris (in a yaoi way).

Anna


	2. The Shadow on the Moon at Night

Another late night, another drunk driver.

Kevin Ryman wouldn't say that he was _bitter_ about still being on highway patrol after applying for S.T.A.R.S. on two (_two!_) separate occasions, but he didn't have to be all sunshine and smiles about it, either. The hours of a traffic cop were bad, the pay was worse, and sometimes he felt that if he had to tell one more person to recite-the-alphabet-from-L-to-W-as-quickly-as-you-can-without-singing-it, he was going to have to punch something.

His potential was being wasted, as far as he was concerned, but apparently Wesker and Marini were both too busy kissing Irons' ass to see it. And so, here he was, pulled over on one of the city's back roads behind a beaten up old Camry with personalized plates that he'd observed swerving from lane to lane.

Taking one last sip of the coffee he'd picked up at the start of his shift, he sighed and stepped out of his cruiser, slowly making his way up to the driver's side door.

He tapped on the window and it rolled down, giving him a better look at the driver: a pale young man with longish red hair and freckles, who was squinting at him.

"What's the matter, officer?" he asked, a noticeable slur to his voice. "Quota not met for the month?"

"License and registration, please," he grit out.

The man barred his teeth in a smile. "How about you show me yours, and then I'll show you mine?"

Kevin stepped back, reaching down and pulling on the door handle. "Get out of the car."

"Not until you tell me why you pulled me over. I have my rights, you know."

"You were driving erratically. Get out of the car."

Rolling his eyes, the man complied, awkwardly thrusting one leg out and planting his foot on the ground and then struggling for a minute to get the other to follow it. Finally, he was able to lift himself up and stand, though he swayed dangerously.

"Do you even have a license?" Kevin asked, shining his flashlight directly in his eyes. They were widely dilated, the whites broken by fine red lines.

"'Course I do," he muttered, scowling. He reached into one pocket, then another, and eventually located a driver's license that he handed over.

"Benjamin Bertolucci," Kevin read, glancing between the picture and the man. He didn't recognize him, but the name somehow seemed familiar, like he might've heard it once or twice before.

"Ben," Bertolucci insisted.

"Have you been drinking tonight?"

"Does it look like I've been drinking?" he asked, just as he lost his balance and slammed backwards into the car.

"Yes," Kevin deadpanned.

"So I might've had a few shots a couple of hours ago." Swallowing heavily, he steadied himself. "I'm not over the limit, though . . ."

"Then you'll have no problem following my finger with just your eyes? Not moving your head?" Kevin held up his pointer finger, moving it slowly from left to right and up and down.

Bertolucci's eyes strained from side to side to follow it, though each time his head inevitably began to tilt in the same direction.

Kevin dropped his hand. "What about counting? Count backwards from thirty."

Bertolucci hesitated. "Uh . . . thirty . . . twenty nine . . . twenty eight . . . twenty, uh . . . twenty five—wait, where was I?"

Kevin stared at him.

Bertolucci let himself fall back against the car again. "I've failed, haven't I?"

"Both of them, horribly."

Unlike some previous DUIs, Bertolucci didn't need to be handcuffed, though as they started the drive back to the station, Kevin heard a stream of muttered obscenities from the backseat.

". . . goddamn sonofabitching cops . . . goddamn Ashcroft—'let's have another', she says . . . bet no one fucking pulled her over . . ."

Kevin stifled a long suffering sigh, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. No, he wasn't bitter about those two rejections, about the fact that he and Chris Redfield had been hired around the same time but yet he was still where he had been then, wasting his nights away with the drunks.

The S.T.A.R.S. were probably all at home, sleeping.

And yet, they still made more money than him.

No, not bitter.

". . . your badge number . . . write an article about this . . . police harassment . . . authority complex . . ."

Bertolucci rambled and rambled, almost as though he couldn't stop. Kevin gradually tuned him out, staring fixedly out the window at the rapidly passing scenery. Everything was dark, shadowy—even the light from the slivered moon seemed dim, making the dense expanse of trees running along both sides of the road blend together into tall, black voids.

But then, suddenly, something emerged from the darkness, glinting palely in the artificial yellow illumination of his headlights. Kevin, who had been drifting deeper and deeper away into his thoughts of S.T.A.R.S., came snapping back to reality and slammed his foot down onto the brakes as quickly as he could, twisting the steering wheel sharply to the right.

The car jolted, the tires screeching; Bertolucci flew forward and slammed into the bulletproof barrier running in front of the back seat. His muscles straining against the force, Kevin managed to keep himself from hitting the steering wheel, but was only able to watch in horror as the car kept gaining more and more ground on the thing laying in the middle of the road. But then, with only inches to spare, the wheels ground to a halt and everything stilled, both Kevin and Bertolucci falling back against their seats.

There was a moment of silence, which Bertolucci broke with a loud: "What the _fuck_, cop? And you said _I_ was driving erratically?"

Kevin ignored him, flinging open the door and climbing out of the car, which had came to a stop at an awkward angle, its front tires resting off of the actual road. He ran around the side, halting once his eyes found the thing he had almost hit.

It was a person, maybe a woman, though he was only able to guess from the length of her hair—from what he could see of her face, there wasn't much left. No nose, no eyes, no lips, just a messy, bloody mass of gore.

The rest of her body was much the same, ripped clothes revealing ragged, hemorrhaging wounds, the scarlet blood rapidly collecting into a pool on the pavement.

For all intents and purposes, he would've assumed she was dead, save for the fact her arms and legs were twitching.

"What is that?" he heard Bertolucci ask, his voice muffled through the car window.

Kevin found he couldn't respond, could barely even think—all he knew was that suddenly, an obnoxious drunk or not, he was happy he wasn't alone.

.

"Happy birthday, Chris!" said Jill, smiling brightly. She handed him a perfectly wrapped present, which he accepted with a smile.

"It's your birthday?" asked Joseph, looking up from his computer and frowning. "I don't have to get you a gift, do I?"

Chris rolled his eyes, tearing the paper off the small, hard object that he had already guessed was a jewel case. Gradually, the cover of a video game was revealed, and Chris grinned.

"_Final Fantasy VII_! I've wanted this for two years! How did you know?"

"I guessed," she said, her smile turning vaguely proud. "I'm good with knowing what people want as presents. It's a talent."

"This is _so_ awesome," said Chris, carefully opening the case and staring at each disc in turn. He ran his finger over the first, then pulled out the manual and flipped it open.

Joseph peered over his shoulder at it. "That guy's hair looks like it could kill someone. And what kind of a name is 'Cloud'?"

Chris shooed him away impatiently. "To answer your questions: yes, it is my birthday, which you should already know, considering last year we had an office party for it during which you got drunk and hit on Irons' secretary, remember?"

Joseph blinked, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Yeah, now that I think about it, but just vaguely. Did she slap me?"

"Yes. And yes, you do have to get me a gift."

"Damn . . ."

"Are you having a party this year, too?" Jill cut in.

"Definitely not one here. My sister might come to visit if she can get away from school for a few days, though really, nothing's planned."

"Your sister . . . Claire, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. She's in college back in New York."

"It'd be nice to meet her," Jill said brightly. "You talk about her so much . . ."

"Yes," he murmured, idly sliding the manual back into the case. "She would probably like to meet you, too . . ."

She would like to meet everyone, and that was the problem.

.

It wasn't that Chris was embarrassed.

Well . . . maybe it was. Not _of_ Wesker, but of what introducing him to Claire would inevitably entail. He just didn't know how his sister would react to it, what she would say. He'd never mentioned anything to her, never even given her a hint—she would occasionally ask him if he had any new girl in his life, and he would always say no, because that was the truth.

No girl, Claire.

But now, if she came to visit him and met everyone, what could he do but tell her the truth? He couldn't lie to her, not about something so important, but he dreaded her reaction to it.

Above anything else, he just didn't want Claire to think . . . _badly_ of him.

Of course, some part of him knew his fears were unfounded. Claire was understanding and supportive, a wonderful sister—she wouldn't judge him just because he was in a relationship with another man.

He hung on to that positive line of thinking as he picked up the phone and dialed in the number for Claire's dorm room, his nervousness growing as it rang again and again.

"_Hi, this is Claire—"_

"Hi, Claire, it's—" he began haltingly, only to be cut off.

"—_I'm not in right now, but if you leave a message I'll definitely get back to you as soon as I can—"_

He set the receiver back into its cradle, glaring at it as he did so, though he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. In between classes and going out with her friends, Claire had become hard to get a hold of. Recently, they usually talked when she called him, not visa-versa.

Sighing, Chris glanced at his computer's clock and saw that lunch was still an hour off. Unfortunately, this left him with one option: paperwork.

There was never any shortage of it, truly, but the previous week had been very eventful: a hostage situation, a bank robbery, and a drug bust all in the span of six days, and now that the action was over he was left with the technicalities. However, writing reports had never been his strong point, and it took him an inordinate amount of time to grind one out.

But, as luck would have it, Chris had only managed to type the words, "_the suspect then proceeded to"_ when the door to the S.T.A.R.S. office opened and Wesker strode in, an unreadable expression on his face as he stared down at thick stack of papers in his hands.

Jill looked up at him sharply, her hands stilling on her keyboard. "Do we have a new assignment, Captain?" she asked, the hope shining through in her voice.

Wesker hesitated briefly, flipping to the next page of the file. Chris saw his brows draw together, small lines forming on his forehead as a slight frown appeared on his face. "There was a body discovered early this morning," he finally began, "out on one of the back roads . . . a forty two year old female, not that you could tell . . ."

Everyone leaned forward in their seats eagerly, save Brad, who suddenly looked spooked. "'Not that you could tell'?" he echoed. "What does that mean?"

"The body was badly mutilated—mauled, in fact. That was the cause of death—hemorrhaging from the bites. Apparently, she was still alive when she was discovered, but she bled out before the paramedics could arrive . . ."

"_Mauled_?" It was Barry who spoke this time. "So it was an animal attack? Then why are—"

"Not an animal," Wesker interrupted. "She was mauled to death by a human. The bite marks were identified as _human_."

.

.

Author's Note: I have actually been a passenger in a car during a DUI pullover but my mother ultimately wasn't arrested, so I'm not entirely sure how they go about it. :) Isn't family wonderful?

Anyway, totally random Final Fantasy VII reference is random! I was having a really difficult time coming up with what Chris would want as a present, so I just looked at my bookshelf and viola!

And you know, now that I think about it-how was it that none of the people who were killed by the zombies in the forest prior to the Mansion Incident reanimated after their bodies were found? Did Wesker or someone sneak down to the morgue and shoot them in the head when nobody was looking?

Thanks for the reviews!

Anna


	3. Searching for Fragile Bones

Looking at the human remains spread out over the cold, steel morgue table, Chris was almost able to imagine that there was an American Jack the Ripper prowling Raccoon City.

Ms. Anna Mitaki, forty two, was mutilated beyond recognition. Her face was literally _destroyed_, decimated, the nose and lips and eyelids all missing. Her tongue, her cheeks, her neck—all were just _gone_, leaving bits of bone and tissue visible. Bites ran up and down her arms and legs, huge chunks of flesh ripped away, while her abdomen was one large cavity that allowed him to see what remained of her intestines.

There wasn't much.

"I've never seen anything like it," the corner had commented blandly, just after Jill had fled the morgue with a hand over her mouth.

"Were there multiple assailants?" Wesker asked, his hands crossed over his chest and his head tilted in the direction of the body. Chris almost wished he could see his eyes for once, just to see if his expression mirrored the emotions he knew were playing out over his own face at the moment—horror, disgust, even shock brought on by the sheer _viciousness_ of it.

But he was as emotionless as usual, his lips set in a thin line and his eyes hidden by the thick black lenses.

"We're trying to determine that," said the coroner. He pulled the sheet up until it covered Mitaki's face, and Wesker finally looked away. "We took some casts of the bite marks, but we had to send them to a lab in Chicago. The results should be back in a week or so."

"Send them to me once they are," he replied tersely, gesturing for Chris to follow him as he headed for the double doors leading back out into the basement hallway.

Sparing one last glance at the table, Chris obeyed, trailing at his heels out of the morgue.

He was happy to be away from the body, but the image of her exposed skull was burned into the backs of his eyelids.

.

Albert Wesker wasn't often confused. He made it a point not to be, to always be prepared for any situation that might occur, to anticipate outcomes and variables and adjust his plans accordingly. It was a necessity in an environment like Umbrella, and he found that, unlike some he had worked with, he excelled at it. That was why he was still alive, while the majority of them were not.

But this . . . this did leave him confused.

There was no question in his mind that Anna Mitaki had been killed by a zombie, or perhaps _zombies_. Her wounds echoed those of so many bodies he had seen during the years the T-Virus had spent in development, test subjects who had been ripped apart and eaten whilst still alive. The sheer mindless viciousness of it, paired with the human bite marks, left no other possibility.

That wasn't what had him confused.

What he didn't understand was _why_ there was a zombie in the forest in the first place. All of Umbrella's viral testing was carefully contained within the Arklay Facility, and subjects that mutated into zombies were numbered and then promptly destroyed once their usefulness was over. The same went for all experimental BOWs, even Cerberuses and Hunters.

After all, what point was there in so much secrecy if they let the forest become overrun with what basically amounted to _monsters_? There were always hikers and campers wandering around through the trees—someone would inevitably see something and survive to tell about it.

But yet, none of that changed the fact that Anna Mitaki had been mauled to death by a zombie during what was apparently, according to her husband, her nightly jog.

Confusion. He hated the feeling.

Apparently, so did Brian Irons, though he was much louder about it.

"Did you see today's headline, Wesker?" he shouted, his face red. He slapped a newspaper down onto his desk, thrusting one pudgy finger at the bold print on the top.

DEADLY MAULING IN THE RACCOON FOREST

_Are rabid animals to blame?_

"Bertolucci was with Ryman when he found the body in the middle of the street! He was too drunk to drive straight but he could sure as hell remember this, couldn't he? Goddamn reporters! Now all the other filthy vultures are demanding a statement from me about it!"

Wesker adjusted his sunglasses. "It is certainly . . . unfortunate . . . that this incident is receiving so much attention."

"Why was there an 'incident'? Tell me that. How? Umbrella told me, _promised_ me, that they would keep their—their bioweapons in their laboratories! That—"

"What Umbrella does or doesn't do is out of your control, Irons. They are paying you not to care."

"This could ruin me!" he hissed.

"So could those two rape charges of yours from college," he replied mildly. "And that complaint filed by your wife from the hospital, where she was recovering from a beating with a belt."

Irons blanched, his piggy little eyes losing some of their anger.

Wesker stood, sliding the newspaper off the desk and skimming over it briefly. There was nothing in it that was particularly bad for the public to know, just that a badly damaged corpse had been discovered on one of Raccoon City's back roads.

"Umbrella will handle this," he finally said, setting the paper back down. Without wasting anymore breath, he turned and exited the office.

Irons watched him go, his fists clenched under the desk.

"They'd better," he muttered. "They'd better. This is my town, after all . . . no one can just do what they want in it . . . no one . . ."

.

So good old Al was a policeman now.

After all, he was wearing an outfit with the RPD symbol across the sleeve and the words 'Special Tactics and Rescue Service' on the back, and he was standing in the police station's parking lot, talking rather amicably with all the other cops.

However, while ten years was a long time, Marcus didn't think that Wesker was the type to randomly change careers and go into law enforcement, especially when he had been so deeply entrenched in Umbrella. It was almost funny to contemplate.

Actually, the more he thought about it, the more hilarious and impossible it became.

There obviously was something else going on here, but he wasn't sure what. Then again, it didn't really matter. Marcus didn't need to know _why_ Wesker was where he was, just so long as he was still in Raccoon City.

"Shooting range tomorrow, Captain?" one of the other cops was saying, a young woman with brown hair. She fumbled with her car keys with one hand, but still managed to smile nicely at him.

Marcus watched carefully to see if Wesker would smile back, but he didn't.

"Yes, unless something unexpected comes up. Same time as last month."

"I just love the shooting range," said another cop, a man with dark brown hair and a green shirt. "Best birthday present ever. I love the look on Forest's face when I win."

"And I enjoy the look on your face when _I_ win," Wesker replied, his voice actually slightly . . . _teasing_.

Marcus frowned deeply, something about the tone making him grind his teeth. Teasing . . . like it was all just a joke . . .

_Ah, time to die, Doctor—_

"You can't let me win like, as a present?"

"And what kind of present would that be, Chris? You would know I let you win."

Chris narrowed his eyes, looking quite annoyed, but after a second he broke out into a small smile.

And Wesker . . . _smiled back_. It was barely there, just a minute tightening of his lips, but Marcus could see it.

And as he started his song, calling his leeches back from the shadows of the police station parking lot where they had taken cover, he realized that he found it very, very interesting.

.

.

Author's Note: No, 'Anna Mitaki' is not a (very dead) self insert-she's actually mentioned in the first Resident Evil novelization as being one of the victims of the zombies in the Raccoon Forest. I guess Priscilla and Becky McGee are next on the to-die list.

Oh, Irons. How I hate you. You're going to die very painfully.

So yeah, its been like a month. And I'm sorry! But things have been like, crazy busy around here, not to mention we're in the middle of an ice age. Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen so much snow in my life! The Sabretooth cats will be emerging shortly.

Thanks for all the reviews everyone!

Anna


	4. Forces Go To Work While We Are Sleeping

Wesker watched blearily as Mitaki's body burned, the flames licking up higher and higher, turning her exposed tissues into black ash. The mixed smell of burning blood and meat and hair churned together into the unmistakable odor that could only be created when fire met a human corpse, one he was familiar with-recently, Umbrella had started disposing of all of their test subjects this way.

Certainly, it was more efficient than the method they had previously used, and much cleaner. God only knew what had materialized in the sewers under the old Management Facility in all the years the dead experiments had spent sitting there . . .

"You realize the Virus is no longer contagious, Irons," he said, a slight sneer in his voice. "You don't have to wear that."

Irons looked at him over the top of the protective mask, radiating skepticism. "So you say."

"So I know, Irons. For that matter, it cannot even be airborne in the first place. Contracting it requires direct contact with one of the infected."

"Like Mitaki so obviously had," he said darkly. "How does Umbrella plan to explain away the destruction of the body?"

"A mix up on the part of the funeral home. Accidental cremation."

If he had been able to see Irons' mouth, he thought he would probably be scowling. "Is there any business in this city that you people don't have on your payroll?"

"You misunderstand. The funeral home will be under the impression that there was a mix up as well."

The flames had now burnt away the majority of her epidermis, making her look like a large lump of formless black coal. They began to grow in intensity as they ate through the layers of her remaining organs and fat, sending an orange glow swaying through the dark room.

It was two o'clock in the morning, the last Wesker had checked. Everyone save the few officers working the nightshift were at home, probably sleeping (including Chris, who Wesker had personally ensured would sleep very deeply thanks to an appropriate dose of sleeping pills slipped into his beer).

Burning Mitaki's body had been a very high priority, something he hadn't been able to delay in any way. Despite how mutilated she had been, he knew it was only a matter of time before she would've risen.

Now, with that out of the way, the logical place to continue would be at the Mansion, to see if any subjects were unaccounted for. He was also going to have to file an official report on the matter, which he was hardly looking forward to-anything that ended up involving Spencer's Russian lapdog Vladimir irritated him to no end.

Stifling an annoyed sigh at the thought of it, Wesker checked his watch and found that only forty five minutes had passed.

This was going to be a long night.

.

Claire Redfield sighed, having been lulled into near catatonia by the sound of her art appreciation professor's droning voice.

"The first title that Munch gave to the work was _Der Schrei der Natur, _German for _The Scream of-"_

"This class was harder than I thought it would be," Elza whispered in her ear. "I can't retain any of this crap. I think it's broken my brain."

Claire nodded loosely, in full agreement. Every time she entered the classroom, it was like some kind of blanket was thrown over her brain, blocking out its functioning.

"I mean, the only reason I signed up was because I thought it would be _easy_! I mean, you just look at pictures and talk about brush strokes, right?" She shook her head, blonde hair flying around her face. "But _no_, nothing's ever easy."

It was times like these, endless lectures and difficult classes, that made Claire envy Chris. What she wouldn't give to be a member of S.T.A.R.S., to have so much excitement in her daily life. He didn't have to worry about homework or grades-he just seemed so . . . _free_.

But, unfortunately, he was dead set on her going to college. _So you can be a professional, _he said, _so you can have a career._

She, of course, argued back that _he_ was a professional, _he_ had a career, and yet had never set foot on a college campus in his life, but he could be just so damn stubborn sometimes.

"-believe that Munch may have witnessed the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa-"

She would be seeing Chris soon, or at least she hoped she would be. His birthday had been yesterday, but she was planning on going out to Raccoon City to visit him for a few days, if he wasn't busy.

She'd been out there a few times before, though her stays had always been brief-weekends, mainly, and of course holidays-and she'd never really gotten to meet any of his friends. She'd never even been to the police department!

Definitely, there were things that were long overdue, and she hoped to remedy them with this trip.

"-perhaps be some type of mummy-"

She would also be missing several art appreciation classes while she was in Raccoon City.

The thought actually made her smile, even as she stared at the hideous painting tacked up to the blackboard.

.

Chris felt oddly groggy when he began to awaken, the shrill sound of a phone's ring pulling him away from sleep. His head and limbs felt . . . _heavy_ . . . while his mouth was dried out, his saliva sticky and thick.

Groaning, he took a deep breath and ran his tongue over his teeth, blinking hazily over at the nightstand. The phone sat there innocuously next to his alarm clock-which, he noticed was going to go off in four minutes.

He threw out an arm and groped blindly for the receiver, trying multiple times to get a good grip on it. Finally, he was able to put it to his ear.

"H-hello?" he croaked, his voice raspy.

"Hi, Chris!"

". . . Claire . . ." he said, barely able to get the name out through a yawn.

"Oh, did I wake you up?"

"I was supposed to be up soon anyway," he muttered, running a hand through his mussed hair and blinking his eyes very deliberately in an attempt to clear his sleep-blurred vision somewhat.

Usually, he didn't struggle to wake up-if anything, he was a morning person, something his days in the Air Force had ingrained in him.

He wondered vaguely if he was coming down with a cold or something.

"My classes began at six o'clock this morning," said Claire, the pout audible. "Art appreciation. We had to stare at the image of this like, ugly zombie thing shrieking at a red sky for an hour. But, anyway, happy birthday! Did you have a good time?"

Chris winced as he sat up, a dull ache making itself apparent as he shifted his weight. Wesker certainly hadn't held back last night . . .

"I had a great time," he said, smiling toothily.

"Did you have a party?"

"No, but only because if you try to have a party with S.T.A.R.S. there's a good chance someone will get suspended. But Jill-remember, I told you about Jill Valentine?-gave me _Final Fantasy VII_."

"Oh yeah, I remember. Lock girl. It'd be nice if I had a face to go with a name, though."

Chris stilled, his eyes straying over to the empty side of the bed Wesker usually occupied. It was no surprise that he was gone-Chris may have been a morning person but Wesker was usually up at the crack of dawn, already well into the day's paperwork by the time everyone else arrived at the station.

How anyone could focus on that so early was beyond Chris's comprehension.

"Do you . . ." He paused and cleared his throat, ripping his eyes away to focus on the nightstand. "Can you get away for a few days? I'd like to see you."

Claire's response was instant: "I thought you'd never ask!"

Nervousness settled in his chest like a block of ice.

.

By the time Chris got off the phone, got dressed, made coffee, battled traffic and stumbled into the lobby of the RPD, he was forty five minutes late.

There wasn't a lot of activity or noise in the large, open room, save for the rapid clacking of the receptionist's fingers against her keyboard, which seemed to echo due to the high ceiling. Above, a few officers walked along the balcony, talking quietly amongst themselves.

Chris made a beeline for the double doors to his left, his fast, heavy footfalls drawing an annoyed look from the receptionist. However, he only saw it out of the corner of his eye before he darted into the adjoining room, the doors swinging shut behind him.

Inside stood a cop Chris only vaguely recognized (Elliot Edward, he thought his name might've been) and a thuggish looking blond man in handcuffs who was being fingerprinted and did not look happy about it.

Slipping past them, Chris continued through the next door and down the connecting hallway, noticing for the first time just how damn _far_ the S.T.A.R.S. Office was from the entrance.

By the time he finally arrived, he was almost out of breath and fifty minutes late instead of forty five. Wesker would _not_ be pleased. The man kept everyone under his command on a short leash, demanding professional perfection and, of course, punctuality.

And, while Chris thought that it wouldn't kill him if, given their situation, he'd cut him some slack every once and awhile, he knew that wasn't ever going to happen.

Inhaling deeply, he steeled himself and stepped into the office, dreading the stack of paperwork he knew Wesker was going to force on him.

"You're late."

The words rang out before he was even through the threshold, though they didn't come from the Captain. In fact, as Chris looked around the room, he noticed that Wesker wasn't even there.

"Late night?" Jill continued, looking mildly interested.

"Actually . . ." Chris frowned. From what he could remember, his night had cut off both abruptly and early, almost like he had passed out. But he hadn't had very much to drink, had he?

Shaking his head, he shrugged and walked over to his desk. "Maybe."

"Oh, did Redfield get laid?" asked Joseph, perking up and away from his computer. "Finally?"

Chris rolled his eyes, pressing the power button on his own computer. "Where's Wesker?"

"Meeting with Irons," said Jill. "Supposed to be a long one."

Brad shuddered, glancing over his shoulder at them. "I feel sorry for him."

"I'm just glad he isn't here," said Chris, breathing a small sigh of relief. "I don't need _more_ paperwork-"

"Redfield! Good, so you've finally decided to show up, have you?"

The small smile that had found its way onto his face dropped off immediately at the sound of Enrico Marini's voice. Chris slowly looked in the direction of the doorway and found the man standing there, staring at him.

"And just in time to start itemizing and organizing the ammunition stores in the supply room. I'll tell Captain Wesker to expect the report by tomorrow morning."

Jill snickered slightly. Chris glared at her.

.

It had been awhile since Wesker had last visited the Mansion, but nothing had changed. The rooms were as large and ostentatiously decorated as he remembered. The fine furniture and rare paintings seemed darkly beautiful from a distance, perfectly maintained, only for closer inspection to reveal the layers of dust that covered their surface.

Lamps burned, fireplaces had ash sitting in their hearths, the tables had unused dishes on them, plates and silverware having been painstakingly arranged for guests who would never come-so very much effort had been put in to making the place seem _lived in_.

Wesker knew better. Some of the rooms were used, of course, mainly to house researchers and groundskeepers, but all the real activity in the building was focused in a place no one could find, no one could see-the basement labs.

That was where Wesker currently stood, watching idly through an unbreakable window as one of the more updated line of Eliminators, as Marcus had called them, tore apart a live pig. Odd, he hadn't thought that BOWs could be capable of something such as 'sadism', but the methodical way it went about prolonging the pig's torment could be nothing else.

"I-I have no idea how this could've happened," Doctor Martin Crackhorn was busy stammering, his eyes darting back and forth over the coroner's report on Anna Mitaki. "Are you sure it was one of the inf-"

"What other explanation would you offer, Doctor? A group of at least _four_ individuals have suddenly banned together and decided to start biting people to death? In the very forest surrounding this lab?"

Crackhorn hesitated, seemingly unsure of what to say now that any room for denial was gone. His nervous gaze darted from the report to the window, which was now splattered with blood and gore. The pig was finally dead, its dismembered body twitching as the Eliminator began to eat, its fangs tearing mercilessly into its prey and ripping away huge chunks of flesh.

"Did you take blood samples from her?"

"Yes. They're being analyzed as we speak. I'll have Howe pass the results on to you, though I doubt there will be anything surprising in them."

"We sever the spinal cords and burn _all _of the experiments," Crackhorn hissed. "We take _every _precaution-"

"But you must admit that one is overlooked every once and awhile. Remember Trevor? That hideous girl in chains who ripped the faces off of several researchers? She wandered for years before I had her dealt with."

Crackhorn squirmed, swallowing convulsively as he reread portions of the file. "Let-let me make some calls. I'll get this straightened out . . . There has to be some other explanation . . ."

.

The warm night air was pleasant against his face, a sharp contrast to the cold, sterilized environment of the labs. He hissed out an irritated sigh, leaning forward against the porch's wooden railing.

It had taken hours of going through both new and old reports, searching databases, and speaking to anyone who had anything to do with the disposal process to conclude that there were absolutely _no _subjects that had been left unaccounted for. All of them had been properly numbered and destroyed.

Therefore, he was no closer to finding an explanation than when he had started and still suffering with that grating sense of _confusion_.

Slowly, he turned his eyes upward and onto the forest stretching out in front of him, endless rows of dark, towering trees that forced the ground beneath them into pitch blackness. For the first time, he noticed how unnaturally _quiet_ it was, completely lacking the normal sounds of nature-there were no birds or insects to be heard, only the muffled noise of the guard dogs barking in their kennels.

It was as if the entire forest had suddenly died, become empty save for the decaying creatures that watched and waited, so very _hungry_ . . .

.

.

Author's Note: Since I'm going to be starting college in about a year, my mother claims that Art Appreciation was one of the most difficult classes she took and has warned me against it. Also, I only really know anything about two works of art: The Scream and the Mona Lisa, and I thought the Scream was more appropriate given the story.

Do I need to explain who Claire's friend Elza is? Because she's actually kind of a canon character that I decided to include for no reason at all. Also, Dr. Crackhorn! I always laugh when I see his name because my mother once pointed out that it sounded like 'crackwhore'.

Credit to DamonWesker for suggesting that they burnt the bodies of the zombie victims!

Now, I'm off, to spend a nice long weekend at A & G Ohio! Thanks for the reviews, everyone!

Anna


	5. You Forgot Me Long Ago

"H—hello?"

There was _nothing _more important than the G-Virus.

"Hello? D'you have any idea what time it is? Hello?"

Young, sleep-fogged, barely even aware, each word seemingly forced from a mouth that didn't want to cooperate with its owner. The man on the other end probably wasn't entirely aware of what he was doing, his mind still too close to the border between sleeping and waking to process his surroundings properly.

Maybe, in the morning, he would wake up and think that he'd simply had a strange dream about answering the phone and getting no reply from the other end.

"_Hello_?"

Birkin slammed the phone back down into its cradle, unable to listen to the voice anymore without grinding his teeth.

It was three o'clock in the morning in Raccoon City. Most people were asleep, curled up in their warm beds dreaming the night away, but not William Birkin—he was where he _always_ was, deep beneath the city streets in his laboratory, bright florescent lights glaring down on him and creating artificial day.

There was _nothing_ more important than the G-Virus, not even the fact that there was someone, some man, apparently spending the night with Wesker.

Wesker didn't matter, after all. He hadn't for a very long time, not since that strained, awkward wedding day, the false smiles and the empty congratulations juxtaposed with the icy, vindictive look in his eyes.

Was it odd, Birkin sometimes wondered, that he considered the day of his marriage one of his worst memories, perhaps only second to the day he had met Alexia Ashford?

But none of it mattered, not. one. bit. Not Wesker or Annette or Sherry, or even the fact that Wesker was sleeping with someone—the only thing in the world that meant anything was the _virus_. It was his life's work, his magnum opus, his greatest creation. It was better than anything Marcus or _Ashford_ could've ever come up with, something that would redefine anything and everything that had come before it.

There was _nothing_ more important than the G-Virus, certainly not _Wesker_, nor that _irritating_, _obnoxiously young_ voice that seemed to intrude into his head more and more and more with each day that passed after he heard it.

William Birkin was an obsessive man by nature, one that absorbed things deeply and held on to them, his mind simply refusing to let go. They settled in the forefront of his thoughts, latched on like some type of parasite, and _ate_ at him, demanding increasing amounts of attention until it was all he thought about.

There was _nothing_ more important than the G-Virus, but suddenly, he couldn't concentrate. He thought about the voice, about it's owner, about what he looked like. Tall, short, muscular, thin, brown hair, blond? How had Wesker met him, where? Was he someone he had come across during his mission, a member of S.T.A.R.S?

What was the little bastard's name?

Birkin had to know, at least some of it. He hadn't even deliberately come to this decision, like some subconscious part of him had arrived at it for him—one moment, he simply found himself standing up, muttering an excuse to one of his assistants, and heading for the lab's exit.

That was how he found himself where he now was, sitting in his parked car on the street where Wesker's apartment building stood, his hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.

He wasn't sure how long he had been there, anxiously eyeing all the passersby. It was a middle class neighborhood, not horrible but not particularly good, either—Wesker could've afforded better, but Birkin assumed a public servant, even a captain of a special forces team, could not.

Midday had begun fading into twilight before he even realized it, his mind having been too distantly preoccupied with watching to notice anything else.

He was about to start the car and go back the way he'd come, vaguely dreading the long walk through the labyrinth sewers to reach his lab but ultimately deciding that he couldn't just go home, nothing was more important than the G-Virus, after all, but all of his thoughts came screeching to a halt when he saw a car pull up and a flash of blond hair emerge.

Wesker slid out of the driver's side and slammed the door shut behind him, waiting for the passenger door to open before clicking the locks closed.

"—veterinary medicine sounds like a perfectly acceptable degree for someone who likes animals. I don't understand the problem."

"Claire says she'd cry if she ever saw one of the animals _die_. So now she wants to completely change courses, though she doesn't know _what_ she wants to take."

The man who emerged from the passenger seat was tall and tanned, with dark brown hair and a finely muscled body. He had bright eyes and a cheerful smile and the same annoying voice that mocked Birkin's every thought.

He didn't appear to be anymore than twenty five and wore a S.T.A.R.S. uniform that seemed to be simply a green version of Wesker's. He moved confidently, his head and shoulders held high, and talked to Wesker in an easy, free manner that most people who met him would never dare to.

Birkin immediately hated him.

No, Birkin immediately _loathed_ him.

"—so we're going to discuss it in more detail when she arrives tomorrow," the man continued, shaking his head. "Though I think she's going to try to convince me to let her become a mechanic."

One of Wesker's eyebrows arched. "A mechanic? A nineteen year old girl?"

"She loves motorcycles." He scowled deeply. "And bikers."

"Don't be too overprotective, Christopher. She won't respond to it well."

_Christopher. _Somehow, it was different from what Birkin had been expecting.

"Dinner?" Wesker suggested abruptly, pausing on the sidewalk. "I forgot that there's nothing in to eat."

Christopher hesitated, seeming to think. "What about that place downtown, off of Warren Street? It's cheap."

Wesker nodded, turning back to the car and unlocking it. Christopher slid back into the passenger seat, and in a matter of seconds, they had disappeared down the street.

Birkin sat there staring at the spot the car had occupied for a long time, his thoughts and awareness turned entirely inward. Twilight turned into night, a dull moon rising into a starless sky, and finally, he surfaced enough to start his car and leave, heading back to his lab.

Nothing was more important than the G-Virus, after all.

He wound his way through the sewer passageways on pure instinct, the correct turns and doors to take long-ingrained in him, though his mind wasn't really _there_ to guide him.

It was one o'clock in the morning when he finally walked back into the work area he had left earlier that day. Things had changed, been cleaned and rearranged, and Annette was sitting behind one of the desks.

She looked up at him, the expression on her face bland and unpleasant, tired, dark.

"Where have you been?" she asked, her voice almost monotone.

Birkin stood in the doorway for a long moment, his hands wrapped tightly in the white material of his lab coat.

"I want a divorce," he finally replied, the words slipping out of his mouth before he had even registered them entering his brain.

The shock on Annette's face echoed his own feelings perfectly, though he just couldn't bring himself to take the words back.

.

Sherry Birkin swallowed her nervousness and told herself that her father _would_ be there, no matter what. That was what he'd said, after all: "no matter what, I'll be there. I promise."

He'd promised.

He hadn't come on any of her classes' field trips, or to career day, but those had all been different from _this_. She'd been reminding him about it for _months_, every single time she saw him, and he'd agreed to be there, _no matter what_.

But tonight was the night of the school play, the play she had the lead role in, and as she peaked out from behind the curtain hung across the stage, she couldn't see him anywhere in the crowd. She saw some of the _other_ girls' parents, ones she was familiar with from those field trips, ones who were room-mothers and attended every class party, which they themselves had planned and organized.

But no father, no head of scraggly blond hair or tired, thin face to be seen.

Hadn't she told him the right time? She—she was _sure_ she had, she _knew_ she had . . .

"Two minutes, everyone!"

He wasn't coming. He'd promised but—but he wasn't going to keep it.

He'd . . . lied.

It made her feel stupid, like he'd tricked her. It made her feel ridiculous, too, standing there in her costume dress, about to go and do something that wasn't even important enough for him to care about.

Her eyes burned, her lower lip trembling, but then the curtain was drawn and her homeroom teacher turned to her and motioned for her to go take her place on stage.

Sherry swallowed heavily, bit the tears back, and stepped out into the light, opening her mouth and reciting her first line with a voice that was only slightly hoarse.

.

It was dark by the time her father did finally arrive. The play was long over, the majority of her classmates and their parents gone. A few were still there, the parents who were most popular and liked to talk with each other and the teachers while their children ran around the school parking lot, playing tag and getting their costumes dirty.

Sherry didn't even try to join in. All she felt like doing was sitting there with her head in her hands, though they wouldn't have let her play even if she'd wanted to.

Her father pulled up next to the curb and quickly got out, his long white lab coat waving in the warm spring breeze.

"Hi, Sherry," he said meekly, raising the hand gripping the car keys in greeting.

Sherry summoned up the most venomous glare she could in response, even as she sniffled pathetically.

"Doctor Birkin," her homeroom teacher's voice rang out. The woman had turned away from the room-mothers she had been talking with and was wearing the same smile she usually did whenever writing out a detention slip. "May I have a word with you, please?"

"O—of course," he stammered, walking over to her and out of Sherry's range of hearing.

Sherry didn't bother watching them talk, her gaze instead falling to her own reflection, which stared back at her from the shiny silver surface of her father's car.

She looked dejected, a deep frown on her face that was made only more severe by the fact that her hair was pulled back into a green tie. It matched the dress, which was so big and frilly it seemed to swallow her entire body up, leaving only her booted feet exposed.

She focused on their reflection for a moment, something about it making her narrow her eyes—

And then she was jumping up and making a small, choked yell, stumbling backwards from the patch of grass she had been sitting in.

"Sherry?" asked her father concernedly. Even her teacher and the room-mothers looked in her direction.

"I—I just thought I saw something crawl over my shoe." It had been a brief flash of motion on the car's reflective surface, a type of quick shifting of light that had made her sure there was something there.

But now, looking down, she saw nothing.

"I think it was just my imagination," she added, when she saw they were still watching her.

But if it had just been her imagination, then why, later that night in her room as she put the boots in her closet, did she find one of them covered in a thin, clear layer of _slime_?

.

.

Author's Note: 'Tis the unwritten rule of Resident Evil yaoi fanfiction: if Birkin is in a Wesker/Chris story, or is even just MENTIONED IN PASSING, there's gotta be some past Wesker/Birkin to deal with. But I included it just because Wesker/Birkin is my second favorite Resident Evil pairing ever (after Wesker/Chris). Though no, I have no intention of this dissolving into some weird threesome (unless you all . . . want that, or something? o_O)

Though, I don't really hate Annette like I, say, hated Excella, so I'm not trying to break them up because of that. I just feel that Birkin pretty much wrecked his entire life after he became so obsessed with the G-Virus, and that his marriage had basically been over for quite awhile.

And Sherry must be like my fourth favorite character, or something (after Wesker/Chris/Birkin) because I write about her so damn much. I mean, seriously!

Anyway, first chapter of anything posted from my new computer! It's awesome!

Thanks for all the reviews and sorry for the late update!

Anna


	6. Lining Up For the Execution

Anna Mitaki's death, as it turned out, had only been a horrific prelude of things to come.

Hikers in the Raccoon Forest were suddenly dropping like _flies_, one after another in quick succession, each turning up dead via extensive mutilation inflicted on them by the mouths of other humans.

Age, race, gender—none of it seemed to matter to these people. They indiscriminately slaughtered anyone who had the misfortune to run into them, holding them down and biting through everything from denim to cotton to leather in their rush to get at the flesh below.

And then, they ate _everything_. Skin, tissue, organ meat, fat, blood—some of the victims' bones had almost been picked clean, scarring from bites visible on their dull white surfaces.

It was, in a word, disgusting, possibly more so than anything else Chris had ever seen in his life. He'd dealt with serial killers before in his career, but never _cannibals, _never anyone who had killed their victims in such a long, agonizing manner.

"From all of the separate distinctive bite marks we've been able to find, the tally of perpetrators is up to around ten," the coroner said grimly. He stood in between two stainless steel autopsy tables, his latex-gloved hands hanging at his sides. On the tables were two bodies, each entirely covered by identical white sheets.

"Miss Deanne Rusch," he announced, after he had turned to the table on the right and revealed what was left of the corpse's face.

Chris was struck with the impression that she had once been pretty, when she'd still had skin. High cheekbones, almond shaped eye sockets (that were now missing the balls, and the lids), and long ash blonde hair that still held some blood in it.

"Nineteen years old—a literature student at Raccoon University, if the ID found on the body is right."

"It's right," Wesker confirmed, blasé as always.

Nineteen years old—Claire's age. Just a college student, with her entire life ahead of her.

Now, however, she would never get the chance to live it.

"Her heart is entirely gone, as are her liver, spleen, kidneys, and uterus. Around half her skin went with them, as did her eyes, her tongue, and her lips. Entirely ripped apart, just like all the others, as well as her friend here." He gestured to the covered body. "Christopher Smith, also nineteen, also a student of Raccoon University."

Chris almost shuddered, his eyes shifting over the white sheet. His name was common, of course, one of the most popular in the United States, but something about one of the victims sharing it made him uncomfortable, reminded him of how easily _he_ could be the one under the sheet.

"But," the coroner continued, "there was something different about Smith's wounds. Just one of them, on his neck." He showed them, revealing a ragged mess of blood and tendons where the boy's throat should've been, and began pointing with a careful finger. "It's longer than what a human would make, and there are more tooth impressions. Forty-two, to be exact. Twelve incisors, four canines, sixteen premolars, ten molars . . ."

Wesker made a small noise of understanding. "It was a dog."

"A very big dog," he confirmed, walking over to a silver cabinet in the corner of the room and withdrawing a small evidence bag. As he held it up to the light, Chris saw a long, razor sharp fang glint through the plastic.

"It broke off in the wound, probably when it scraped against the spine. Makes me think its owner was unhealthy." He hesitated, glancing back at Smith's throat, and then to Rusch's destroyed face. "If its any consolation to the families, they died of blood loss long before most of this happened to them."

Chris reply was instinctive, something he didn't have to think about.

"No. No, it's not."

.

Sergei Vladimir took another long look at Comrade Wesker's latest report, his good eye lingering on the line that estimated there were at least ten infected freely roaming the Forest, preying on the city's population. Between them, they had claimed seven victims, often more than one in a day. All of them had been hikers or campers or runners, people who had reason to frequent the nature trails.

So far, the full extent of the story had yet to break in the press, and all of Raccoon's citizens were still safely ignorant of what was going on. But, both Sergei and Wesker were quite aware that it was only a matter of time until something leaked, until a morgue assistant decided to make some quick money by selling information or a grieved family member grew impatient with the police's apparently dead end investigation.

And that would lead to something of a double edged sword. On one side, it would keep many of the hikers and the campers and the runners away from the Forest, therefore limiting the number of victims and drastically reducing the chances of someone living to tell about an attack, but on the other side, it would result in a horde of overzealous reporters looking for more information about what was going on.

Reporters, Sergei had gradually come to understand, were a strange breed—they were single minded and vicious, like rabid dogs. Once they picked up on the scent of a story, they pursued it without stop, usually with no regard for the law or even their personal safety.

What was to stop one of those dogs from coming into the Forest with a video camera, or doing something equally as bothersome for the company?

Sergei, therefore, decided to be proactive about this. While at the moment, neither he nor Wesker nor, apparently, anyone else working for the company knew where the creatures originated from, he could solve that mystery later.

All that mattered was that he knew where the creatures _currently_ were.

"There are possibly ten or more BOWs in this forest," he began, folding Wesker's report and slipping it into the pocket of his coat. "And at least two separate types—the MA-39 Cerberus, which greatly resembles a Doberman Pincher dog, and human carriers, which, to summarize, look and act in the manner of a zombie. Surely, all of you are familiar with that, from movies. Yes, Comrades?"

"Yes, sir," they echoed, their voices booming in the deathly still clearing.

"Good," he said shortly, eyeing each of them in turn. He could tell which were new from the looks on their faces, their stances—Nicholai Ginovaef seemed bored, while the young Hispanic man next to him was obviously a little nervous, his eyes darting from side to side as he took in the wide expanse of trees they stood in the middle of.

"We will remain here until either all of these creatures are dead, or all of _you_ are dead. Go."

The men turned and ran, guns at the ready, and soon disappeared into the depths of the woods.

Gunfire began soon afterwards, and Sergei found himself vaguely taking notice of the fact there were no birds there to react to it.

.

They had responded fast, just as Marcus had expected. It hadn't been that long since his creations had caught that fool woman, the one who had decided to sacrifice her safety to exercise late into the night.

Hadn't she known that horrible things lurked in the darkness, waiting and ready to pounce and eat you up? Hadn't all of them, each new person who had wandered into the deep, dark woods, every step taking them closer and closer to danger?

Apparently not, though this Russian man did. He understood what hid in the shadows of the trees and came prepared, with a whole unit of armored and armed men who gunned down each and every one of Marcus's creations one after another until there were none left.

Quick response, within a week. Umbrella certainly was as efficient as he remembered, always so prompt when it came to hiding their secrets.

But there were some things that sheer _speed_ couldn't counteract.

And there were some secrets that just couldn't be hidden.

.

Water.

It was one of the most important components of all life. Air and food and _water, _H2O, an oxygen atom neatly bonded with two hydrogen atoms. So simple, but so vital to the human body, to its base functioning, its metabolism.

There would be no life without water.

Every human on earth had the instinct to _drink, _the compulsion to put a cup of water to their lips and swallow it, to ingest as much of the life-sustaining fluid as they could.

Water was synonymous with life.

But soon, Marcus mused, so very soon, that would change for the scientists of the Arklay Research Facility.

For them, drinking would sentence them to death, and then to the mindless, _hungry_ oblivion that followed.

.

.

Author's Note: Distracted-ness! I've gotten all these new games recently (Heavy Rain ftw) and the brainpower I put into playing them drained me of ALL WORDS.

So yeah. Sergei. I like Sergei, and I liked the Umbrella Chronicles, which is where I believe Deanne Rusch and Christopher Smith are mentioned as being victims of the zombies.

Marcus's master plan would seem to have several different phases. Let some monsters loose in the forest, fuck a little with the minds of Wesker and Sergei because of it, infect the Mansion, let everybody panic a little, infect Raccoon City, bask in the chaos and commence with revenge.

And did anyone notice the tiny little CSI reference? It's only there because I caught, literally, two scenes of an episode this morning and I thought it fit for this.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Anna


	7. And Somehow You've Got Everybody Fooled

The dogs were restless. They paced back and forth in their kennels, the warm night air ruffling their short fur, and paused ever so often to raise their muzzles and sniff curiously.

This place they were kept in often smelled of human fear, of death, but recently it had become stronger. The leaves and the grass reeked of blood and decay, rotting tissue mixed with the pungent odor of sickness.

The atmosphere was unnatural. Danger was nearby. They understood this clearly, their animal instincts telling them to get out, get away, flee.

But their cages would not allow it, and so all they could do was pace and sniff, occasionally pausing to lap up water from their bowls.

.

It was dark by the time Claire arrived in Raccoon City via the main highway. The bright lights of the welcome sign were a relieving sight after so many hours spent on her motorcycle flying past exits and rest stops, and the streets, as busy as they were, seemed calm compared to the speeding traffic she had battled all day.

Raccoon City was by no means a small town, but it had a kind of quaint feeling to it. The streets were all clean and the storefronts well-maintained, and there were enough trees, shrubs, statues, and finely designed buildings to make it undeniably attractive.

Like any metropolitan area, there were run down sections, and according to what Chris said, the crime rate was steadily on the rise, but as a whole, she found the city very pleasant. When she finally graduated college—something that seemed very far off at the moment—making a permanent move here was the first thing she would do, so long as nothing with Chris had changed.

Shifting slightly on her seat to try to get the blood flowing again, she braked at a red light and took the opportunity to check her watch. It was going on nine thirty, meaning that she was over an hour late.

Chris would be worried. He was the consummate overprotective older brother, and therefore disliked her interest in motorcycles. She'd only gotten her first one because he'd disliked the boy she'd been seeing at the time even more—they'd been able to negotiate a trade: a bike for a breakup.

He was probably about convinced at the moment that she had crashed and was lying in a ditch somewhere.

That, coupled with her aching muscles and hunger, drew her attention to a green neon sign on her right. Hanging high above, at the top of the building, it read: _Diner_. A glowing open sign sat in a nearby window.

Chris had probably already had dinner, and she was starving. She could get something to eat and call him to explain that she was just running late, solving two problems at once.

Mind made up, she pulled off the road and into the small parking lot, where she gladly took off her helmet, got off the bike, and made for the entrance.

The door opened with a soft chime. She stepped inside, squinting at the change from darkness to florescent light, and let the door swing shut behind her.

The diner was small and clean, obviously designed to look old fashioned. There was a counter with metal stools across from the entrance and rows of booths built into the walls, each with matching faux-red leather on the seats.

Nothing was occupied. There were no customers, and no one was behind the counter.

Frowning, she strode further inside, eyes scanning the room for any sign of life. There were dirty dishes on one of the tables, a jacket hanging on a coat rack near the door, and a pot of coffee sitting in the maker behind the counter, steam still wafting up from it.

But no people.

"Hello?" she called.

"Hello!"

She jumped, oddly startled by the voice, and whirled around. In the back, in front of a swinging door marked 'staff only', stood a middle aged woman with grey hair pulled severely back into a bun. Her nametag read 'Emmy'.

"Please sit down, dear," she said, gesturing at one of the clean tables as she moved to clear away the dishes from the dirty one. "It's been such a slow night, I wasn't expecting anyone else for awhile—what can I get you to drink? We have—"

"A Coke would be nice."

"How about a Pepsi?"

"Okay. Do you have a payphone?"

"By the bathrooms."

The bathrooms were marked as such by plaques of a block woman on one door and a man on the other. The phone was in an alcove at the end of the same hallway, considerately tucked away from everything else.

Claire inserted her change and dialed Chris's number.

It rang five times before he answered.

"C—Chris Redfield," he said, and she found herself frowning again.

"Are you out of breath?"

"I—Oh, Claire. Hi. Uh, yeah. I just finished jogging. The phone was ringing as I came in."

Her eyebrows drew together. "But I was supposed to be there an hour ago. Why were you out?"

Hesitation. ". . . You were, weren't you? Well, I guess I just lost track of time. Sorry."

"Don't be. I mean, this way you didn't worry!"

She smiled and shrugged it off, but something about it nagged at her: Chris was acting odd, and she was going to find out why.

.

"Yes, okay, love you, too. Goodbye, Claire. See you then. Bye."

Chris hung up the phone and turned a glare on Wesker. "Sadist. You knew she was coming tonight. Why didn't you tell me what time it was?"

"Maybe I didn't notice," he said, picking his sunglasses up off the coffee table and carefully placing them back onto his face. Chris didn't know why Wesker was so attached to them—the best he could come up with was maybe his eyes were hypersensitive to light or something.

He'd never once considered asking.

"You noticed," he muttered. Sighing, he stood from the couch and straightened his clothes, trying his best to smooth out the wrinkles and make it look as though he hadn't spent the last hour and a half fucking around.

"Do you want me to leave?" Wesker asked, sounding as though he didn't really care one way or another. He picked up a half-empty bottle of beer from the table and took a drink of it, a sight that still struck Chris as strange. To him, Wesker seemed somehow _refined_, like he should be living in a mansion and drinking a fine wine, not cheap beer.

"Of course I don't want you to leave . . ."

"But," Wesker drawled languidly, like he already knew every thought in Chris's head, everything he was going to say.

"But . . . I think I should ease her into it. You know . . . maybe have her meet you as my boss first, see what a great guy you are. And then . . ."

Wesker was smirking now, standing and echoing Chris's earlier actions with his clothes. "You don't have to tell her at all."

"No—no, I have to. I _have_ to. I'm tired of lying to her. And hiding . . ." He gestured back and forth between them. "I mean, I'm not . . . ashamed." He bit his lip, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter. "How did you deal with it, at first? How did you tell your family?"

"I don't have any family."

"Oh. I'm sor—"

Wesker held up a hand to silence him. "I suppose its because I was raised in the '60s and the '70s, Christopher—not the most accepting of times—but I've never felt the need to tell anyone. I feel as though it's no one's business."

He stared at the sunglasses, wishing he could see what was going on underneath. But Wesker was a difficult man to read even without them. "Do you not want me to tell her about _you_?"

"You can tell her everything, if you wish."

Chris shook his head, turning on the tap and splashing some water on his face. He groaned.

"God, I don't even know why I'm worried. She'll be happy as long as I'm happy . . ."

Wesker turned and made for the front door, waving flippantly over his shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow. Are you bringing her into work?"

"For a little while. She wants to meet all my coworkers."

The door opened and closed, the sound of Wesker's key clinking against metal audible from the other side as he locked it.

Chris let his hands hang under the gentle spray, water drops sliding down his fingers to hit the basin, and glanced over at the clock on the microwave. Claire said she would be there around a half an hour from now, which gave him plenty of time for a short shower.

He smelled like sex.

.

Doctor John Howe wasn't feeling very well.

Actually, that was an understatement. He was feeling like complete and utter shit.

It had begun a few hours ago as a dull ache in his limbs, but soon that had spread up his spine and into his shoulder blades and the muscles of his arms. With it came a deep fatigue and pounding headache centered right behind his eyes, a migraine like nothing he had ever felt before.

He took twice the recommended dose of aspirin, gulping it down with a glass of water, but if anything, he had just gotten worse afterwards, nausea churning in his stomach. Eventually he had simply put his head between his hands and squeezed, the pressure bringing some barely-noticeable relief if applied in a certain way.

He'd been in the middle of writing a letter to Ada, something he tried several times to continue as he sat in his darkened office. However, the words just wouldn't come and after awhile, he found himself with his forehead pressed against the desk, his arms forming a barrier around his face to block out any light or sound.

It didn't help, and soon he was forced up by the arrival of a panicked, screaming assistant wearing a bloodstained lab coat and latex gloves.

Howe assumed at first that she had been observing an experiment or a surgery, but not for long.

"He _bit_ him!" she shrieked wildly. "He bit him and he bit him and his—his _face is gone—_there was so much blood and he just wouldn't stop—!"

John shot up from his chair. "What? Where?"

"The B-7 Lab," she choked out, reaching up to touch the blood splatter on her face.

John hurried out of his office and to the nearest elevator, which took him deeper down into the lowest levels of the sprawling basement.

He heard the commotion before the doors opened to reveal it. A group of people had gathered in the hallway outside the lab entrance, all of them just as frantic as the assistant had been.

He pushed through to the center of the crowd and had to throw his hand up to cover his mouth at what he found there.

On the floor were two men, both apparently scientists. Neither of them was particularly recognizable.

One of them, lying on his back, had sustained severe injuries to his face and neck. It looked almost as though someone had taken a shotgun to his head, but the blood soaking the other man's mouth and chin told a different story. He had been shot in the head by one of the guards now standing nearby, though by the decayed state of his skin and the milky eyes that still sat open, Howe understood that he had technically been dead long before that.

He had been infected.

"We have an incident down here on B-7," one of the guards was saying into his radio. "It seems to be contained but we need back up immediately."

The reply, when it came, made bile rise in his throat and cold sweat bead on his skin.

"Roger that, but we don't have any backup to send. We've been overwhelmed for the last few hours, people going nuts all over the place, people getting bit—the infirmary's full up. Even the dogs won't let us get near 'em all of a sudden. We don't know what's going on. Over."

Work as a virologist was dangerous. John had known this before he had even started college, and it had lurked in his mind all throughout his career, different nightmare scenarios creating themselves in his head.

But he had never thought it would actually happen.

He'd never thought there would be an outbreak, not of T.

But that's what it was. He knew it, and so did many of the others. He could tell from their faces, the sudden terror in their eyes.

But none of them said it, not yet, not when there was still some faint room for denial.

Instead, they watched the bodies twitch on the ground, many of them itching their arms as they did so.

.

Claire yawned hugely as Chris led her up the steps of the RPD building and through the front doors. After she'd finally arrived the night before, they'd stayed up late talking and watching television together, snacking on popcorn in between discussion of anything and everything they could think of.

All in all, she'd only gotten a few hours of sleep, which meant she looked half-dead as she entered the lobby of the station.

"Wow," she said groggily, reaching up to rub her eyes. Chris had said the place was pretty, but she hadn't been expecting the almost cathedral-like quality it possessed. The lobby was three stories high and made almost entirely of stone, with a massive statue directly across from the entrance. Behind that was a reception desk that they stopped at to get her a visitor's pass, and then they were on their way to the S.T.A.R.S. Office on the second floor.

"We're all squeezed in here tight," he said once they reached the door. Opening it, she saw that he was right. The office was a medium-sized room packed with desks, communications equipment, and cabinets, which all combined to make it claustrophobic.

Most of the desks were occupied, and everyone quieted as they walked in. She felt awkward.

Chris led her over his desk—one of the messiest in the room—and the woman sitting behind him took the opportunity to introduce herself.

"I'm Jill Valentine," she said, smiling kindly.

Claire had imagined someone taller and rougher looking and was nicely surprised to find that Jill was very pretty.

"I've heard a lot about you," Claire said, smiling back.

The introductions went quickly after that, and it turned out that she had been wrong in one way or another about most of the people he worked with.

None more so than Captain Wesker.

Chris talked about him frequently, practically hero worshipping the man, making him out to be the closest thing to perfect there was when it came to a commanding officer.

But Claire . . . didn't like him.

She wasn't sure _why_ she didn't like him. He was certainly nice enough to look at and he was polite to her, but something about him struck her as being . . . off. He was not only reserved, but cold in a way that made her uncomfortable. Despite being inside, he wore sunglasses, but she thought she could feel him watching her from underneath them, scrutinizing her.

And as she sat next to Chris at his desk throughout the course of the day, watching Wesker watch her from the corner of her eye, she spent a lot of time wondering what her brother saw in him that was so great.

.

The day was uneventful, much to Claire's chagrin. She would've loved to have seen the S.T.A.R.S. in action—maybe a hostage situation, or a bank robbery—but nothing had gone on except paperwork.

Once they left the station, Chris took her to a movie and then a little hole in the wall Italian restaurant where they got a secluded table beside some rows of wine bottles. She got the feeling the hostess thought they were on a date, which made her shudder.

"I'll have the red wine," Chris said when their waitress arrived, picking up the menu and thumbing it open.

Claire's last soft drink had been a Pepsi, so she ordered a Sprite this time and turned to her own menu, pausing ever so often to glance up at her brother.

He seemed nervous, his shoulders stiff and his mouth drawn into a thin line as he read the words in front of him. He didn't even relax once the waitress came back and they ordered, though he drank about half of his wine in one go.

"So," he said, fidgeting. "How'd you like everybody? Jill?"

"Oh, Jill was great! No wonder you two get along so well as partners!"

"And, uh, Joseph? He just transferred from Bravo Team."

"Yeah," she said, taking a sip through her straw. "Kind of obnoxious to Brad, though. Can't be nice being called 'Chickenheart'."

"Yeah, he hates it." He hesitated again, picking up his glass and finishing the wine. "Wesker?"

Claire bit her lip, buying herself some time by reaching across and fishing a breadstick out of the basket in the center of the table. "Well, he's . . ."

"He's?"

"Very . . . intense. I, uh . . ."

Chris stared at her, fingers tightening around the stem of the glass. "You don't like him, do you?"

There was something in his voice, a type of stress and vulnerability she had never heard from him before. It brought back all of the curiosity she had felt when she talked to him at the diner, the sense that there was something going on.

"Chris," she said sharply. "Is there something you need to talk to me about? I mean, you've been acting kind of strangely."

"No," he began to say, but visibly stopped himself. "Um, yes, Claire, there is. I—I've been meaning to tell you for—for awhile now, but I've just never . . ."

He seemed to brace for her reaction. "Wesker and I have a . . . personal relationship. Outside of S.T.A.R.S."

Claire tilted her head, eyes narrowing with confusion. "You mean, you're friends?"

Chris gave a strange little half nod, half shake, not meeting her eyes. "When I say 'relationship', I mean . . . _relationship_." He put a huge amount of stress on the word, and very slowly, realization crept over her.

Her eyes went huge. "_Oh_. Y-you mean, _that_ kind of—"

"Yes," he breathed, closing his eyes.

She sat there for a long moment of stunned disbelief. Chris had always been so . . . _macho_. He'd played sports for as long as she could remember, hunted, flied planes, fought with other boys at school and _won_, smoked and drank—though, of course, now that she thought about it, there'd been a distinct lack of girlfriends over the years, hadn't there?

"You're gay?"

"I—" He looked as conflicted as he sounded. "I'm not . . . I mean, I guess I am. It's something I've struggled with since—since _puberty_, for God's sake. I'm really not sure what I am. But I know that I'm . . . attracted to Wesker."

"And you're in a . . . relationship. Currently. For how long?"

"Since, um, since pretty soon after I was hired by S.T.A.R.S.."

"That's two years!" she exclaimed. "And you never _told_ me?"

"I should've. I'm sorry. But I was just worried that you—"

"That I what? Wouldn't love you anymore, or something?" She laughed, shaking her head. "I think I should be insulted."

Chris visibly relaxed, a hint of a smile crossing his face. "You mean, you're okay with it?"

She sighed, popping a bit of breadstick into her mouth. "I wanted to be an aunt, but I guess you can always adopt."

"But—you don't like Wesker."

She grinned sheepishly. "First impressions aren't always accurate, right? I mean, maybe you could invite him over or something and we could talk some more. In a casual setting, you know?"

"You mean tonight?"

She wasn't looking forward to it, but she agreed anyway.

.

Wesker was drifting in and out of consciousness to the sound of the television when he felt a vibration in his pocket. Eyes barely even opening, he withdrew the pager and cupped his hand around the bright display, trying to avoid waking up either Chris, who was asleep in a chair to his left, or Claire, who was asleep on the floor, her arm thrown over her head.

When he'd received a phone call from Chris earlier in the evening, he'd been surprised to find out that not only had he told Claire everything, but that she wanted to 'get to know him better'. He could tell from their interaction earlier in the day that the girl did not like him at all, so she must've been extremely intent upon pleasing Chris.

The night had been long and boring, him giving her fabricated details of a life he hadn't lived while she talked mainly about college, Chris chiming in every few minutes with something, seemingly thrilled that they were being civil with each other.

Eventually they'd all quieted, eyes drifting to the television and then shutting as they fell asleep.

His were still half shut and bleary as he looked at his pager, though what he found there put him on alert instantly:

LV4

In general, the status of Biohazard Level 4 Contamination being designated to a facility meant that ninety percent or more of the staff had been infected with an incurable virus. Applying it to Arklay could only indicate one thing: there had been a massive outbreak of T.

Standing, he turned the pager off and walked slowly across the carpeted floor, towards the front door, where he paused to slip his shoes on.

"Where are you going?"

He glanced over his shoulder, saw Claire's open eyes reflecting the light of the television screen.

"Work paged," he said, and it wasn't even a lie.

She was too tired to be suspicious and let him go without another word, the shadows of the room playing over her face as she went back to sleep.

.

The situation that greeted him when he arrived at the Mansion was one of the various scenarios he had anticipated. In an environment so secluded, word of strange deaths was bound to travel fast, and the scientists that worked with the Virus would understand within a short period of time what was going on.

It was the perfect recipe for a panic like the one currently unfolding on the lawn.

People were everywhere—there were units of biohazard containment specialists wearing stark white protective suits lingering by their vehicles and guards with guns forming a rough semicircle around a group of loud scientists and groundskeepers, all of them yelling about the insanity they had witnessed inside the facility. Some of them were bloody, others visibly injured, gauze wrapped around wounds on their arms and necks.

Standing in the damp grass a distance away from the chaos, he was briefed very quickly: "Twenty one hours ago the first case was reported. A female technician became ill and went to the infirmary, where she died and reanimated. Since then, there have been complaints of similar symptoms from almost every member of the staff. Many of the test animals and guard dogs also appear to be infected."

"Have we determined the source?" was all he asked.

"No. We're going to send the specialists in as soon as we can, but we have to deal with all of them—" A gesture to the employees. "—first. They're trying to leave."

After a moment of thought, Wesker went back to his car and, in the backseat, found a spare handgun. Then he pushed past the guards until he was standing close to the crowd and fired three times into the air.

Silence descended on them immediately, eyes all turning to him.

"All of you," he began, very calmly, "need to turn around and go back inside."

"Do you have any idea what's going on in there?" someone shouted, anonymous amongst the herd of his coworkers. "People are dying, being _killed_! We all just want to go home!"

"I'm afraid that you cannot do that."

"Why?"

"We have reason to believe that this facility has been contaminated with a virus, exposing all of you in the process. Going home would potentially allow you to spread it to those you come into contact with. All of you will have to stay here until we can determine if you are infected or not."

The frenzy was back at that, cries of 'virus' and 'infected' echoing throughout the crowd again and again.

"You can't imprison us here!" was finally screamed above the rest of the noise. "You have no right!"

"Umbrella can and _will_ keep you here," he insisted, entirely unapologetic. "For as long as it needs to."

"No!"

Someone, a man, broke free from the crowd at that moment. Wesker watched, irritated, as he made a run for it, darting across the wide-open space in front of the porch in the direction of the forest.

One of the guards began to raise his gun, but Wesker beat him to it, aiming and shooting the man through the head before he could get within ten feet of the trees.

"Now," he said, this time over horrified screams, "will all of you calmly make your way back into the building?"

.

.

Author's Note: Why do I even try to be on time anymore? Been busy taking the written driver's test and studying for the SAT (and playing Alan Wake) but I tried to make this chapter long to apologize!

Chris Redfield = No Sense of Foreboding AT ALL. And did I finally manage to write an angst-free Claire? *brain explodes from shock* Also, the poor doggies. I love dogs. :(

I still can't write sex. Goddamn it.

Thanks for the reviews and your patience! Both are very much appreciated!

Anna


	8. Pray It Away But It Continues To Grow

Rebecca Chambers twisted nervously in the chair she had been given, her fingers threaded in her lap and her legs crossed at the ankles. She stared for a moment at her thighs, studying the pinstriped material of her pants, but then shifted her eyes up to the desk in front of her. It was the biggest in the room, and the only one not paired up, sitting by itself before a large emblem hung up on the wall. _S.T.A.R.S._, it read in a branchy font. _Special Tactics and Rescue Service._

A section of it was blocked from her view by a man named Chris Redfield, who had introduced himself to her as being Alpha Team's point man. He sat in the desk's swivel chair very stiffly, his posture tense and his body leant forward so he was braced fully against the edge of the desk with his elbows. Frequently, at the smallest sound, he would look up towards the door on the other side of the room, seemingly preparing to get up each time it opened.

After forty five minutes of this, he finally shot her a sheepish smile.

"I'm sorry. Captain Wesker has never been late before . . ." he said, sounding vaguely bemused.

"Does he have to be the one to do the interview?"

"He gets the final say."

Her split second of hope over, she let her shoulders sag, eyes returning to her lap.

Chris began drumming his fingers on the surface of the desk.

The clock ticked.

Then, with no warning, the door opened, and Chris's head was up in an instant, but his expression immediately deflated upon seeing that it was a woman on the other side.

Seemingly already aware of what she wanted, he reached to his left and picked up a folder, which had long since been bent out of shape by the thick stack of papers stuffed inside it. Standing, he wordlessly offered it up.

"This is everything?" she asked, taking and opening it. She had a Southern accent, a rarity in Raccoon City.

Chris snorted, sinking back into the chair. "I busted my ass to make sure I found every last scrap."

"I thought you made Vickers do it," said a woman sitting at a desk on the other side of the room. She glanced briefly back over her shoulder at him.

"I busted my ass to make sure _he_ found every last scrap," Chris amended, though his narrowed eyes served to lessen the effect of the flippancy in his voice. "Why haven't the S.T.A.R.S. been assigned to this one yet, Rita? What's Irons thinking?"

Rita shrugged. "I only know what Marvin tells me."

"Just like I only know what Wesker tells me, and so far, he hasn't said shit. We've handled other serial killings before-so why not these?"

"Talk to Irons if you're so upset about it."

Though Rebecca was sure he was at least in his mid-twenties, Chris could pull off an eye roll like a teenage boy. "I'd rather pound my head into a brick wall."

Rita shook her head and made for the door, folder gripped tightly between her pale fingers. "Deputy Chief Douglas, then. Nice seeing you, Chris."

The door shut behind her with a soft click. Chris resumed tapping his nails against the desk. The woman across the room typed on her computer's keyboard. A redheaded man at the desk closest to Rebecca cleaned a disassembled gun. The clock ticked.

"I—" Rebecca said suddenly, and Chris seemed slightly startled by it, eyes darting up from his hands to her face. "I haven't heard anything about a serial killer in the news."

He gave a strained smile. "I doubt you would've."

She found something about his answer unnerving. "Why not?"

"Most of them have been incorrectly reported as animal attacks," boomed the redhead. His rag squeaked across the barrel of the gun, a .44 Magnum.

Rebecca twisted her head slightly to the right, so she could see him in her peripheral vision. "Animal attacks?"

Chris leaned across the desk, eyeing her earnestly. "Have you read the papers? The ones that pay any attention are talking about rabid dogs. And, there _have_ been dog bites found, on some of them. But not all."

"Chris," said the woman, warningly. "Rebecca doesn't work here, yet. You shouldn't be—"

"I know, Jill, I know," he said with a sigh. "I just don't get why Irons isn't getting his ass into gear on this!"

"He's too busy with his taxidermy, of course," said Jill. "And that hideous art. Did you see that newest painting? With the nude person?" She shuddered. "It looks like something that should be in Hannibal Lecter's basement."

"I heard he went off on his secretary the other day when she touched one of those statues," the redhead cut in.

"Please. He probably bought the damn things at a garage sale. What harm's she going to do?"

Feeling acutely out of place, Rebecca sat there quietly, hands back in her lap. She wanted more than anything to be hired by S.T.A.R.S., but she would be lying if she said she wasn't intimidated as well. Everything her parents had said to her after she'd told them about her choice to send in her resume came rushing back to her, eating away at her confidence. She was too young, too inexperienced, too naïve, too sheltered. She still needed more time to mature; she should go to medical school, make friends, date boys, go to parties and have some fun—she shouldn't rush into a career at eighteen years old, especially a dangerous one.

But Rebecca wanted to _help_ people. She loved Raccoon City and its citizens, and she wanted nothing more than to make some sort of a difference in their lives.

That was what had ultimately led her here, to the RPD. She'd been beyond thrilled when they'd not only accepted her application, but forwarded it on to the best of the best—the S.T.A.R.S. She suddenly had the opportunity to do something more than just hand out speeding tickets—she might actually end up _saving lives_.

But now, sitting in the S.T.A.R.S. Office itself, Rebecca was reminded that she had no formal weapons training. She had never touched a grenade launcher like the one she glimpsed sitting in the half-open weapons' locker, and the recoil on the Magnum the redhead was cleaning would probably send her stumbling. Nor had she ever worn heavy protective gear like the bulletproof vest she saw slung over the back of Jill's chair. She'd never been shot at before, never been attacked.

Was she ready to face _real_ danger?

"You okay, Rebecca?"

Rebecca blinked, coming back to herself. "Oh, uh, yes, Mr. Redfield—"

"Chris."

"Chris. I'm just a little . . . overwhelmed. All the guns and—"

Chris waved her off. "Don't worry. You'll spend a few weeks at the academy and come back shooting like a pro."

_Would she_, she wondered, but by that time, the phone on the desk behind Jill began to ring and Chris jumped up to answer it.

"Oh, you're at the zoo," he said, once the person on the other end had spoken for a minute. "No, I've never eaten at that restaurant. Veterinary zoology? Wouldn't that be dangerous?" He paused, putting his hand over the mouthpiece. "My sister. Sorry.

"It's not like she's interrupting anything," she muttered, holding in a sigh.

"Oh, no, it's one of the applicants for the medic's position. Bravo Team. Yeah, Wesker's not here yet. Going on an hour late. No, he's never done that before . . ."

.

An extremely long night had continued straight through into the morning. Wesker had spent the majority of it lurking around the front of the Mansion, watching pensively as a multitude of people bustled in and out of the building, taking samples of food and water, bottles of liquor and medications and even soap and hand lotion -anything that had even the remotest chance of explaining the source of the outbreak.

They'd stacked all of the samples, each painstakingly sealed up in hermetic containers, in silver attaché cases sitting in the backs of vans, violent red biohazard symbols gleaming across their surfaces. As each van filled up, the containment specialists slammed their rear doors shut, and without any hesitation they would drive into the forest, off to a laboratory for testing.

"What lab are they going to?" Wesker finally asked, when one of the guards glanced his way.

"Doctor Birkin's. Raccoon General Hospital isn't secure enough, or as well equipped."

Wesker would've smirked at that, had the situation been slightly different. Dear William would be out of his mind by the time this was over, agonizing over the division of manpower among his staff and the one lost workday.

As it was, his lips only twitched slightly, his mind too absorbed with the events unfolding in front of him, with their implications and ramifications. There was always the possibility that this had been an accident, of course, that everyone was paying for someone else's negligence in their lab. All it took was one tiny slip, contact with an open wound or an eye or the mouth, and soon infection would be spread through the original host's new inclinations toward cannibalism.

But Wesker didn't honestly believe that was what had happened. Not with the inexplicable appearances of zombies and Cerberuses in the Forest. That would add an element of coincidence to this situation, and Wesker did not believe in coincidence.

The BOWs in the Forest did not come from the Mansion. They were not an oversight or an accident. Someone, somehow, had very purposefully _put_ them there, and now that same individual had infected one of Umbrella's most important research facilities with T, not only rendering it useless but taking with it millions of dollars worth of equipment and manpower.

Someone, it would seem, had a grudge.

"Ah, Comrade Wesker . . ."

Wesker stiffened at the sound of his name being butchered in that loathsome Russian accent.

"привет, Sergei," he said impassively, eyeing the man as he approached, heavy combat boots squelching in the dewy morning grass. He looked as composed as ever, grey hair combed and imitation Red Army Uniform pressed. Today, he wasn't holding his halberd.

One of his eyebrows rose. "You speak Russian?"

Wesker inclined his head a fraction.

For a fleeting second, Sergei looked quite pleased with that, but then his eyes turned to the Mansion. "You are the scientist, Wesker. So you tell me: was this an accident?"

"It's possible," he replied, very sure that Vladimir had long ago formed his own opinion as to what happened.

"Possible?"

"But not probable. The BOWs in the Forest . . ."

Vladimir nodded, expression grim. "Yes. Tell me—you have worked for Umbrella since . . ."

"I'm sure you saw that in my file."

"Remind me."

"1977."

"A very long time. Does anyone stand out in your memory . . . someone with the knowledge, the resources . . . the spite . . ."

"Too many to count."

"List them. Include details. I want it on my desk before the day is over."

"I have to return to the RPD sometime today, Colonel," he said, almost wincing at the thought of it. Chris was going to have questions, and to add to it, he'd missed the interview of the girl interested in the open position on Bravo Team.

Hopefully, Irons had kept to himself in his office most of the morning. While the man was good for little else, he did make a convenient excuse.

"Your comrades do not sit with you at your desk, Wesker. What is the English term for it? Oh yes—'double task'."

Wesker ground his teeth.

Sergei looked away from him, off into the Forest. The sun had risen fully, streaks of red and orange only just beginning to fade from the horizon. The light beat down onto the treetops, but did not filter down to the forest floor, which remained dusky.

"Do you believe it could have been the Organization?" he asked abruptly. "That this is simply sabotage?"

"No," he answered, eyes leaving Vladimir and wandering off across the throngs of people still gathered in the yard. They came to rest on a lone figure standing at the base of one of the trees, a slender shadow in a lab coat that hung down to her knees. "No, they make a habit of being much more . . . subtle."

Ada's head tilted up, brown eyes meeting his.

This time, he did smirk, if only slightly.

.

For the first time in a longer time than he could remember, William Birkin woke up in his bedroom in his own home, covered by sheets that were actually soft and lying on a mattress that was actually comfortable.

And he was being stared at. That was, in fact, what had woken him up in the first place—the unnerving feeling of eyes on him.

Trying to keep his breathing even, to not give any indication that he had awoken, he slowly strained his eye to the extreme left—

And found himself meeting the intent gaze of his daughter, who looked as though she had seen a ghost.

"Sherry," he breathed, relieved. Groggily, he rolled over, sat up, and tried to raise his hands to his face, only to find that he couldn't lift them that high thanks to his lab coat, the bottom of which had bunched and knotted under him as he slept. "What's the matter?"

Sherry blinked. "You're home."

"So I am," he said, wiggling his arms out of the sleeves of the coat. He ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it down, and narrowed his eyes at her. "You look upset. What's wrong?"

"You're . . . _home_," said Sherry, as if that offered some kind of an explanation.

"So I am," he said, laughing. "I do live here, after all."

"But . . . you're never home. Especially not in the mornings."

His smile became slightly forced, snippets of the previous day running through his mind. Endless fighting, screaming matches one after another with icy silences in between, an atmosphere of such incredible tension in the lab that he'd finally decided to leave for a day, unable to stand it any longer.

"Well," he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, "today I decided to . . . come home and spend some time with you."

Sherry's eyes lit up, blue orbs brimming with hope, but when she spoke, she still seemed wary. "But I have school today . . ."

"Do you . . . have any tests?"

"No."

He reached out and ruffled her hair. "Then, I don't see why you can't take a sick day."

"_Really_?" she asked, a huge smile splitting her face.

"Really," he confirmed, nodding sharply. "Now, go get out of this—" He gestured to her uniform. "Put on something comfortable, and we'll . . . have breakfast together, okay?"

"Okay!" she exclaimed, turning heel and running from the room. A moment later, he heard her bedroom door slam shut.

Hesitating to sigh heavily, he rested his face in his hands for a moment before standing and wandering into his own closet, having realized that he couldn't clearly recall the last time he had changed his clothes. After putting on something fresh, he went downstairs and spent the next five minutes looking for the number of East Raccoon Elementary School.

Finally, he found it, called it, and told the school secretary in very clinical terms that Sherry had come down with what basically amounted to a twenty four hour stomach virus.

By the time he reached the kitchen, Sherry was already sitting at the table eating a bowl of dry cereal, milk splashing everywhere with each bite she took.

He'd never particularly cared for cereal, but it had been quite awhile since he'd eaten, and soon he was having a second bowl.

"So," he asked, mouth full, "what do you want to do today?"

Sherry hesitated. "I . . . don't know, really. I guess we could go to the mall, or the movies. Or the zoo—I have been wanting to see Max the lion . . ."

"I—" he went to reply, but was cut off by the shrill ringing of the phone. "Give me one second," he said instead, standing.

Sherry looked slightly defeated as he hurried into the living room and picked up the receiver, fully expecting to find Annette on the other end.

However, it turned out to be the very last person he would've thought.

"Why are you not at your laboratory, William?" asked the silky voice, hints of a British accent bleeding through the American one.

"Al?"

"Wesker, please. And you didn't answer my question."

Birkin blinked, mind trying to catch up. "I—why are you calling in the first place?"

Wesker laughed. "Oh, come now, I believe that is a question _I _have more of a right to be asking _you_, don't you think?"

He frowned darkly.

"Unlike you, however, I have a legitimate reason to be calling. I tried your office first, multiple times, only to be told by someone who calls herself 'Monica' that you're at home. You've taken the day off. Imagine my shock."

"I—I had a fight with Annette."

"Hmm," said Wesker, and Birkin could hear his amusement. "It wouldn't have had anything to do with your sudden interest in stalking me, would it? Sitting outside my apartment building, watching me come and go? Really, you must be subtler if you want to go unnoticed. That car of yours is much too expensive for the neighborhood I have to live in."

He should've known Wesker had noticed that day. "I told Annette—" He paused, glancing around to make sure Sherry hadn't stepped into the room. "—that I want a divorce."

There was a moment's hesitation on the other end; Birkin thought that maybe, for the first time, he'd managed to catch Wesker off guard. But then he was talking again, as if he hadn't even stopped. "_Congratulations_, William, though I'm afraid we've become sidetracked. I haven't called to discuss your marital troubles."

"Then why did you call?" he bit out.

"There's been an incident."

His frowned deepened. "An—"

"A Level Four biohazard, at Arklay. An outbreak of T. Approximately ninety eight to ninety nine percent of the staff is, as we speak, infected, dying, dead, or reanimated. There are also around fifteen hundred separate samples of potential sources in route to your laboratory for immediate testing."

For a moment, Birkin was stunned beyond words, trying to accept what he had just been told. He'd always been aware of the possibility, of course—the T-Virus was incredibly infectious, and with so many samples of it sitting in Umbrella's labs, a biohazard could easily occur.

But still, he hadn't been expecting it, especially not at Arklay. He had fond memories of that facility, and now to think that everyone inside was essentially _dead_ . . .

"How?" was all he managed to ask.

Wesker hesitated again, and for a moment the only thing on the line seemed to be the muffled sound of a car.

"Well," he finally said. "It wasn't an accident."

Cold dread washed over him like a bucket of ice water. "What do you mean, _it wasn't an accident_?"

"What do you think I mean?" he asked, and hung up.

Birkin stood there for a long time afterwards, listening to the dial tone and trying to fight back a peculiar mix of horror and fear that threatened to overwhelm him.

.

Wesker was three hours late by the time he slunk into the police station though the back parking lot, following a flight of iron steps up to the roof and entering through a back door that put him fairly close to the entrance to Irons' office. These hallways were rarely traveled, and he managed to reach his destination without being seen.

He walked into the office without knocking first. Irons looked up, scowling darkly.

"Wesker," he said, "just the man I wanted to see. Do you know we have another corpse in the morgue today? Another _mauled_ corpse?"

Wesker stopped in front of the desk, eyeing the array of taxidermied animals in the room with distaste. "Hardly surprising."

"_Hardly surprising_?" he shouted, jumping up and slamming his meaty fists against the top of the desk. "You said Umbrella would take care of this mess! You promised me—!"

"Listen to me very _closely_, Irons," said Wesker, very softly, his breath making the other man blink in discomfort. He'd barely even felt himself move, but suddenly, his hands had been curled around Irons' lapels and the man's face was closer to his than he normally would've liked. "Umbrella has put you where you are not because of your willingness to accept bribes—half the men in this station would do that, and each and every one of them would make a much better chief than you. No, Umbrella has put you here because you have _secrets._ Secrets that, if they ever got out, wouldn't just ruin your reputation, but your _life_. If anyone ever learned, say, that blood from all of those missing girls, the ones with the long blonde hair, could be found in your special little room in the sewers, then you would have a much bigger problem on your hands than Umbrella."

Irons had gone pale, his eyes wide and his hands trembling at his sides. "How do you know about that?" he demanded, voice wavering.

Wesker smiled cruelly. "Oh, I know everything about you, Brian. There's not one crime you've ever committed that I'm unaware of. And if you don't _stop_ trying to interfere with Umbrella's business, everyone else will know about them, too. Do you understand me?"

With his raging bravado vanished and terror in his eyes, Irons looked more pig than man. "Y-yes!"

Wesker let go, and he fell across his desk, his gut digging into the edge.

Smoothing his hair down, Wesker turned and headed back towards the door. "I seem to be getting sidetracked frequently today," he said, shooting a glance over his shoulder at the man as he sank back into his chair. "I came here to tell you to tell anyone who might ask that I've been in a meeting with you all morning."

He stepped out the door and into the adjoining hallway, glad to get away from the blank gazes of the dead animals, and continued on to the S.T.A.R.S. Office. Through the door, he could hear a multitude of muffled, excited voices, some of which he recognized immediately and a few others he found unfamiliar.

Frowning, he opened the door and found the office overflowing with people—the entirety of both Alpha and Bravo Teams, who usually worked in alternating shifts, as well as a young teenage girl he only recognized from the photograph that had come with her resume—Rebecca Chambers, the Bravo Team candidate.

In the center of the crowd were two men, though he only recognized one of them, a brown haired, overweight gunsmith named Robert Kendo who he had been introduced to through Burton.

They had two large attaché cases sitting out, one on Chris's desk and one on Jill's, and were handing out handguns.

"Why do you call them Samurai Edges?" asked Jill, ejecting the magazine of the one she had been given.

"Joe and I had a Japanese grandfather, darlin', on our father's side," answered Kendo, without missing a beat. He handed another of the guns to Edward Dewey, and then one to Kevin Dooley. "He was the first gunsmith in the family, too, so we decided to come up with a Japanese-sounding name for our greatest creation."

Chris was taking aim with his, one eye squeezed shut and a huge smile on his face as he targeted the trophy cabinet in the front of the room. Barry, meanwhile, was already busy at his desk modifying his.

"You're the rookie, babe?" Kendo asked Chambers, holding one of the Samurai Edges out to her. She looked startled.

"Well—no, not yet. But I hope I will be soon."

Given what he had seen of the other candidates—Ryman was applying, _again_—Chambers was indeed going to be hired soon enough.

Kendo smiled kindly. "I'm sure you will be. And it'll be here waiting for you." He set it back into the case, traded it for another one, and hesitated, blinking. "I haven't seen Captain Wesker around today—"

"He's late," said Chris. "Really late."

"I was in yet another meeting with Irons," Wesker said loudly, finally making his presence known. "There's been another . . ." He made a vague gesture to the area of his neck, and the mood in the room seemed to get slightly darker.

He pushed between Frost and Vickers and took the gun from Kendo, making a show of nodding appreciatively as he checked it over. It did seem to be what Kendo had been promising for over a year, but he had too much on his mind to truly analyze it.

Stifling a yawn, he wound his way back out of the crowd and made for his desk, brushing past Chris and Speyer just in time to hear the latter lay down the consequences of the shooting match they were about to take part in:

"If _you_ win—you can use the grenade launcher, for three weeks. But if _I_ win—I get to go out with your sister."

Chris's reaction was everything Wesker would've expected, and soon the entirety of the teams, as well as the Kendo brothers, had filtered out of the room to follow him and Speyer to the shooting range.

That left him alone with Chambers, who was watching him intently, hands clasped in front of her.

"I apologize for making you wait for so long," he said, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. "Chief Irons . . ."

"Enjoys hearing himself talk?" she blurted, only to immediately look embarrassed. "Uh—that's what Chris—Mister Redfield—said."

"It's an accurate description," he said, sitting down and pulling Chambers' resume out of one of his desk drawers. Looking over it again, he was reminded of the question he'd had when he'd first seen it two weeks ago. "To start off, I am curious . . . You're obviously an extremely intelligent girl—you have impeccable grades, you could easily be accepted to medical school—why do you want to join S.T.A.R.S. instead?"

She didn't seem to find it a hard question. "I want to help people. I want to—make a difference."

_There isn't much difference you can make in this city_, was the only response he had to that, one he did not voice.

.

Very slowly, Alyssa Ashcroft peeked around the edge of her laptop's screen, casually raising her beer to her mouth as her eyes zeroed in the man she and Bertolucci had followed into J's Bar twenty minutes prior. Captain Wesker of S.T.A.R.S. was currently sitting at a table across the way, having drinks with a man she recognized as Chris Redfield, one of his subordinates, and a redheaded teenage girl who was chattering excitedly about her intention to switch from taking courses in small animal veterinary medicine to ones in veterinary zoology.

From what she had seen of him in the two years since the founding of S.T.A.R.S., Wesker didn't strike her as a particularly sociable or cooperative person, but he'd proven on occasion to be friendlier than Chief Irons. She was hoping that maybe, just maybe, he'd be willing to talk to her about the details of the article she and Bertolucci were in the middle of co-writing.

It hadn't even been two weeks since the first death—that of forty two year old Anna Mitaki, who had been out on her nightly jog through the Raccoon Forest when she had been attacked and killed. After her, steadily increasing numbers of people had turned up dead in much the same manner, frequently more than one victim per day. There had been an inexplicable twenty four hour lull in the killings three days ago, but then they had started back up, the most recent victim being a young woman named Tonya Lipton, who had been found that morning in a ditch by two hikers.

In total, twelve people were dead, and it seemed to Alyssa that no one seemed to be taking much of an interest in it. Not even half of the deaths had been reported in the local papers, and those that were even mentioned were only referred to vaguely as 'maulings'.

Alyssa was planning on remedying that soon, when her article would hit the front page, informing everyone about the true number of victims, the seeming lack of police initiative concerning them, and various other, more disturbing, facts.

The only thing that could make it even better would be an official statement from someone in a position to know the details of the killings. Thus, her current observation of Wesker.

"You should be the one to go try," Ben said, cracking open a peanut, discarding the shell, and popping the rest into his mouth. "I already know he won't talk to me."

"Why not?"

"He's hated me ever since I tried to interview him and Irons last year about that missing girl, the blonde one from Old Court. It didn't go well."

"Then why did you even come?" she hissed.

He feigned innocence. "And miss out on a chance to have dinner with my girlfriend?"

"I'm _not_ your girlfriend."

"We have sex."

"It's just sex. I'm not your girlfriend. If you're not going to pull your own weight, why should I let you put your name on this article?"

"Because you're my girlfriend," he said, trailing off into a sickly sweet smile as the waitress, a Barbie Doll blonde with a nametag reading 'Cindy', came over to the table to ask if they needed anything.

Rolling her eyes disgustedly, Alyssa shut her computer, stood, and made her away over to Wesker's table, where she slid into the only open seat, the chair beside the girl. "Hello, Captain Wesker. I'm Alyssa Ashcroft, with the _Raccoon Press_. I was wondering if I couldn't have just a moment of your time . . .?"

She couldn't see Wesker's eyes behind his sunglasses, but she felt his gaze. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

"I didn't think there were any current investigations worth a reporter's interest," he said, his tone dismissive.

"I think there are. The deaths, in the Forest."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do. Anna Mitaki, now Tonya Lipton, with ten others in between . . ."

"Let me clue you in, Ashcroft: cases of animal attacks don't cross my desk. They belong to an entirely different department."

"But murders cross your desk."

"Murders?"

"Isn't it true that the bite marks found on all of these victims were human? Wouldn't that make the deaths homicides? Serial killings, of a cannibalistic nature?"

"You're talking to the wrong person. The Special Tactics and Rescue Service has no involvement with this case. Perhaps you'd have more luck making an appointment with Chief Irons?"

"But do you deny that there _is_ an active serial killer in Raccoon City? One that the public hasn't even been warned about by the police?"

But Wesker's patience, it seemed, was gone. Instead of answering, he motioned a waiter over and explained very succinctly that he had no idea who 'this woman' was and that she was 'harassing' him.

Before long, she found herself escorted from the building by a big bartender named Will, all the while silently bemoaning the fact that nothing could ever just be easy.

.

"_Is_ there somebody killing people?" Claire asked, very abruptly, about an hour after they had returned to Chris's apartment. She stood by one of the windows in the family room, finger hooked under one of the slats of its Venetian blind and eyes focused on the streetlights burning on the sidewalk below.

Wesker looked over at her from his spot on the couch. "Yes, Miss Redfield, there is."

"Claire," she corrected automatically. "So everything she said was true?"

"Yes. If you were planning on taking a hike in the Forest sometime soon, I would strongly recommend you don't."

"I don't really like hiking. Or camping, for that matter." She let the slat fall back, turning and leaning against the windowsill. "She said they're . . . cannibals. Does that mean they—?"

"Eat their victims."

She made a face, nose scrunching up. "Like cook and eat them?"

"No," he said, not elaborating any further, trying to spare the girl at least some of the more grisly details.

However, she wouldn't let up.

"Then how?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "They eat them alive."

She gasped, eyes going wide. Chris chose that moment to enter the room, gaze flicking between them momentarily. "Is something wrong?"

"I was—" She hesitated, giving a barely perceptible shudder. "—asking him if what that woman said at dinner was true. Who would ever think of doing something so sick?"

"Don't think about it, Claire. We're going to catch them soon, anyway."

"So the S.T.A.R.S. _are_ working the case?"

"Why so many questions all of a sudden?" he asked, smiling a bit nervously.

Claire shook her head, yawning. "I don't know. I'm tired, and I think it makes me kind of morbid." Arms crossed over her chest, she slunk across the room and sagged down onto the other side of the couch, head falling back until it bumped the wall. Her eyelids lowered fractionally, taking on a heavy look.

Wesker stood, pulling his keys out of his pocket. "I should be going—"

"You don't have to," she interrupted, twisting so her legs rested across the spot he had just vacated. "You know, if you'd rather stay here. It doesn't bother me."

"Yeah," said Chris, wrapping a hand around his arm, "it's late. Just stay."

He had been expecting all day to have the night free. With the situation in Arklay, there were endless things that had to be done; people he needed to talk to, reports to be filed and preparations made.

But now he was backed into a corner, unable to refuse without looking odd.

"If you're okay with it," he finally said, nodding in assent.

"Good," she said, with something of a strained smile on her face. Her eyes shut soon afterwards, leaving him to follow Chris down the hall to the bedroom.

He quickly divested himself of his shirt and shoes, pausing to put his glasses on the nightstand before lying down. His body practically sunk into the mattress, the full extent of his tiredness hitting him with all its force as soon as his head touched the pillow.

"I didn't know there were twelve of them," came Chris's voice from the bathroom, loud over running water. "A lot, yeah, but not that many."

"It's not our case, officially. We don't get told about every body that comes in."

"Why isn't it our case?" he demanded. The water shut off and he stepped into the doorway, leaning against the threshold. "Why is Irons insisting on keeping it in the hands of Branagh and the detectives, when so many people are dying?"

There was no reply. Wesker was already asleep.

.

No matter how hard she tried, Priscilla McGee couldn't sleep. For what seemed like hours on end, she had laid wide awake in her tent, twisting and turning as she tried to find a comfortable position in her sleeping bag. However, no matter if she was on her back or side or stomach, the ground was just _too_ _hard_, like she was lying on a slab of concrete.

Priscilla hated camping, maybe more than anything else in the world, even school. Her family's trips into the Raccoon Forest were always long and boring and pointless, weekends wasted walking through thick patches of trees that looked just like one another. Nights, though, always somehow managed to be even more horrible than the days, a whole multitude of unpleasantness rolled up into one.

Currently, her situation was made worse by the knowledge that it was only Friday, meaning that she still had another night of this coming. Eventually, as she grew more and more tangled in her sweaty sleeping bag, the walls of the tent closing in on her, she decided she had to do something to cool down.

Wiggling free, she stood up and unzipped the tent, stepping out into the crisp night air. It was still spring, and slightly chilly, but she enjoyed the feeling of the breeze against her skin. Some of the sweat dried, and her pajamas gradually unstuck from her body, giving her room to breathe.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed like that, normal time not really existing in the darkness. It was pitch black in their campsite; the fire her mother and father had used to heat dinner had long since gone out, and they hadn't left any lanterns burning for fear of starting a fire. Even the moonlight itself seemed very dim, casting just enough brightness to see by, and to allow the trees to create long shadows across the ground.

It was in one of these shadows that Priscilla saw something move.

At first, she wasn't sure what it was, or even if she'd really seen it at all, but then her eyes had adjusted and she realized that yes, there was something near the base of the trees, threading its way deeper into the forest.

She only clearly saw its hind quarters, but the docked tail and the legs told her enough: it was a dog.

She loved dogs, each and every kind. They were her favorite animals, and if it were up to her instead of her parents, she would have ten of them, or twenty.

Maybe, she thought, she could have this one. If it was a stray, abandoned and fending for itself in the woods, she could rescue it and bring it home with her. Her parents wouldn't be able to say no to something that didn't have a home of its own, would they?

Suddenly very excited, Priscilla stepped back into the tent and shook her sister awake.

"Becky!" she hissed, patting her cheeks. "Becky, wake up!"

Groaning, Becky opened one eye. "_What_?"

"Get up! You'll never guess what I saw!"

"What?"

"A dog! A stray! Get up! We have to go find him!"

Laboriously, Becky removed herself from her sleeping bag and followed Priscilla out of the tent, where she stood, blinking blearily.

"He went that way!" she exclaimed, pointing and grabbing her hand. She tugged her along, past the first few trees, and then, gradually, deeper and deeper, until all sense of direction was gone from both of them.

"Priscilla," said Becky anxiously, eyes flicking from one dark, towering tree to the other. "I—I don't like this. I don't know where we are—"

"He must be around here somewhere," she insisted, hands clutched to her chest. "Here, doggy, doggy. Here, doggy, doggy. Come out, come out wherever you are . . ."

Neither Priscilla nor Becky heard the low, wet growl, just as their sleeping parents, by that time almost half a mile away, never heard the screams.

.

.

Author's Note: It's Midnight here (and around 3:00 AM in Spain, as Amidala Granger tells me), so that means I am finally seventeen years old. :) I'm getting a Resident Evil themed birthday cake, and I intend to use my birthday money to buy lots of Resident Evil stuff on Ebay. XD

So, where to begin? Well, I've been playing Outbreak recently, thus the presence of Alyssa, Rita, Cindy, Will, and J's Bar. It's also in Outbreak where I found this file that mentions all these missing blonde women-my reaction: 'OMFG I KNEW Irons was a serial killer!'

Um . . . the name of Sherry's school and the fact that the Kendos are of Japanese descent are both mentioned in the Darkside Chronicles. Priscilla and Becky are from the old Resident Evil 1 novelization, which I read one time ages ago. And Alyssa/Ben is totally the OTP. Seriously.

You know, Sergei has always struck me as having some kind of weird crush on Wesker. 'The sign of a healthy relationship', indeed . . .

Oh yeah, and thanks for the reviews!

-Annastasia (my full name, for a change)


	9. The Violence Caused Such Silence

Chris awoke to the feeling of warm lips trailing kisses down the side of his neck. Smiling faintly, he shifted his head on the pillow, exposing more skin, and was rewarded by a hand sliding down his stomach and under the waistband of his boxers.

A breathy moan escaped his parted lips as the hand began to stroke in a slow rhythm, the friction of skin against skin lessening only slightly when fingers stroked over his tip and began spreading precum over his shaft.

He lay there in a pleasure induced haze, only moving to grind backwards into Wesker's erection. A sharp intake of breath was his only indicator that it had any effect, and he tried to do it again, only for another hand to come sliding down his back, further and further, until the edge of a finely manicured fingernail pressed against his entrance.

Chris bucked backwards, trying in futile to get him to get on with it, but he kept teasing, his finger circling the hole but never quite sliding in.

Chris swallowed down a desperate moan, and opened his mouth to order him to do something, _anything_, but that's when he remembered:

"_My sister is in the other room, Wesker!"_

He felt a smirk against the back of his neck. "She won't ever know if you're quiet, will she?"

"That's—"

The finger finally slid in, and Chris lost his track of thought.

"That's—not—not the p—"

Another quickly joined the first, scissoring and twisting, _searching—_

And then the phone rang.

Chris laid there in disbelief as the fingers immediately stopped and pulled out, Wesker rolling away from him as they did so. He could only watch as the other man moved to get his cell phone from the pocket of his discarded pants.

Impulsively, however, Chris flung himself over him and grabbed it first. He wanted to see just _who_ it was calling in the early hours of the morning disrupting important things.

"Hello?" he snapped.

There was a long pause.

Finally:

"Redfield, I'm not going to ask what you're doing with Wesker in the middle of the night."

Chris's throat locked up just a little bit when he heard Irons's voice, a realization sinking in that no matter how frustrated, he should never really do things without thinking through their possible consequences.

Another part of him, however, could only think: _What am I doing with Wesker in the middle of the night? Wouldn't you like to know, you perverted old bastard?_

"Just get him on the phone," Irons continued.

"Yes, Chief," he managed to force out. Holding the phone away from himself and putting a hand over the speaker, he waited a minute before he handed it back to his rightful owner, so as to not give the impression that he and Wesker were sleeping in the same vicinity.

"Wesker," he said calmly, even as he stared at Chris with a gaze promising future unpleasantness.

Chris glanced away, at the ceiling and the walls, but at the same time, strained to hear what was being said on Irons's side.

As it turned out, it wasn't much.

"You need to come in. _Right now."_

.

Chris had already known what it was, even though he'd been trying to deny it to himself. Bravo Team was on shift at night; there was no reason to call Wesker when Marini was right there, unless something significant had happened.

Like another murder, or two.

They didn't stay for very long at the RPD. Wesker only traded a few words with Irons before they were back in the car, heading towards the backstreets that led into the forest.

"How many?" was the only thing Chris asked during the drive.

"Two."

The car struggled through dirt and gravel, its tires grinding audibly against the terrain as they merged onto roads that were less and less developed. Chris enjoyed the outdoors, and he had even gone hiking through the Forest on occasion, but he'd never been this deep.

Somehow, he found it unsettling. Like you could wander for the rest of your life and never find your way out.

When they finally reached their destination, the sun still hadn't risen. The only light came from the police cruisers and emergency vehicles, twirling lengths of red that made the shadows look like they were moving.

Yellow crime scene tape had been tied around tree trunks, cordoning off a narrow, overgrown footpath that cut a swath through a coppice of Evergreens. Uniformed officers stood watch beside it, while paramedics hovered around the back of the ambulance, tending to a couple huddled together under a blanket. The woman was weeping uncontrollably into the man's shoulder, while he just stared blankly ahead, his eyes dull and lifeless.

The sight of them made Chris uneasy. Were they survivors of an attack? Had they been out with friends? Or . . .

Slowly, Chris pulled his gaze away and focused on Wesker's back as he followed him to the tape.

"The scene is up a ways," explained one of the officers on guard, a nervous, mousy man named Harry. "It's off the path, but we've put up trail markers."

Wesker nodded, ducking under the tape. Chris followed him, threading as carefully as he could through the twigs and leaves scattered along the trail. His boots squished in mud and rotting vegetation that he couldn't see below the wispy white fog resting slightly above the forest floor.

Wesker continued along without stumbling, pausing only once they reached the first trail marker—more crime scene tape—tied haphazardly around a tree branch. Chris could barely even make it out through the vast darkness that surrounded him on all sides.

Distantly, he wondered how Wesker could see at _all _with sunglasses on, but the thought didn't last very long before it was pushed away by a growing . . . uneasiness.

Maybe it was just because of the murders tainting his perception, but the last time he'd been in the Forest, it had seemed much more inviting. Lush and breathtakingly beautiful, with a thriving ecosystem, full to the brim with all the sights and sounds of life.

But now . . . it seemed stagnant. Cold. Empty. _Dead_. The plants all seemed sickly, wilting, and it was quiet, so quiet . . .

But the most disturbing thing was, in spite of the dead stillness around all him, Chris felt like he was being watched.

"Chris."

He looked up from his feet just in time to stop before running into Wesker's back. A little beyond the Captain, he could see the florescent glow of forensic lamps.

Letting out a small, involuntary sigh of relief, he quickly made his way into the light. Jill was there to greet him, but her smile didn't reach her eyes.

"What's the situation?" Wesker asked, the question directed at Marvin Branagh, who looked as upset as Chris had ever seen him.

"Priscilla and Rebecca McGee," he said, gesturing at the two bodies lying out on the ground amongst the underbrush. The corpses themselves were both covered by sheets, but there was nothing that could be done to disguise all the blood covering the scene. "Sisters. Ages seven and nine, respectively."

Chris sucked in a sharp breath.

"They were on a camping trip with their parents and apparently wandered away in the middle of the night. The father woke up about an hour ago and realized they were missing, only to eventually find . . ." Slowly, he gestured down. "_This_."

"The bodies?" Wesker pressed, without any hesitation. Not even a minute to digest that these people, these _monsters_, had crossed the line from serial killers to child killers.

Branagh nodded to the coroner's assistant kneeling between the bodies. Hooking his latex covered fingers beneath the sheets, he pulled them back just far enough to reveal the heads and torsos.

Jill slammed her eyelids closed and turned her head away, while Chris could only raise a hand to his mouth.

All the other bodies had been torn apart, but these were . . . _destroyed_. Not only were the flesh and organs gone, but bones had been shattered by the force of the bites. Fingers were missing. Chests caved in. One had been decapitated completely, her head lying on its side by her arm.

"Oh my God," Chris muttered into his palm, feeling faintly nauseated.

Branagh nodded again, and the assistant replaced the sheets. Wesker studied them for a few seconds longer, only looking up when the sound of boots crunching on twigs announced Barry's arrival to the scene.

"I thought the parents looked familiar," he said morosely, once he was told the victims' names. "Moira goes to school with Priscilla. What kind of rat bastards would do something like this to two little girls?"

"We'll only know when we find them," said Wesker impassively, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose with his pointer finger. "Which we now have a chance to do, as, in light of this incident, Irons has finally decided to assign us to the case."

Chris had suspected as much, given he'd sent them out to the scene. Still: "It's unbelievable that _children_ have to die for him to get off his fat ass and do something."

Wesker shook his head. "Hardly. He's giving us the case as a PR move—the press is going to find out about this one whether we like it or not."

Chris gave a disgusted grunt of acknowledgement and wondered, not for the first time, how Irons got to be the Chief of Police at all.

"He's called a press conference for seven o'clock this morning, which means—" Wesker held up his wrist and checked his watch. "We have two and a half hours. This area needs to be searched, _thoroughly_. Move. "

Chris pulled his flashlight out and flicked it on, though as he moved through the trees, scanning limbs and trunks and roots, it didn't do much to push away the darkness.

Or help with the lingering feeling, the _certainty_, that there was something out there, lurking and watching . . .

.

Claire woke up with a spine that felt like it had been twisted into a knot and then pulled apart. Couches were never particularly comfortable to sleep on, but Chris's was old and cheap, with pillows that squished down on the edges, leaving her laying half on the springs, half off, thus contorting her body into a painful position.

Groaning, she rolled up and over the side onto the floor, where she managed to stand up and straighten her back, which popped.

Glancing into the kitchen, she was surprised to see that neither Chris nor Wesker was up. It might've been Saturday, but Chris was an early riser, and Wesker seemed to be that type, too.

She shrugged to herself and meandered over to her duffle bag, where she changed out of her wrinkled clothes. Then she started for the kitchen, wondering if maybe she could dig up some pancake mix or bacon—anything, really, so long as it was more substantial than cereal.

However, as soon as she stepped on the linoleum, three things happened simultaneously: she noticed a piece of paper with her name on it sitting on the kitchen table, the phone started ringing, and her foot hit something slick, sending her stumbling into the wall.

She happened to make impact right next to where the phone was mounted, and reached over to pick up the receiver.

"Yeah?" was all she managed to say in greeting.

"Well, someone sounds like they got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!" came Elza's perky voice.

Claire rolled her eyes. "How can you be so cheerful this early in the morning?"

"Because it's not the morning. Not in New York, at least. We're two hours ahead in this time zone, remember?"

"Right," she muttered absentmindedly, staring down at her foot as she shook it. She wasn't sure what she slipped in, but it wasn't water. It was kind of thick, and it clung to her foot, like . . . _slime_.

Making a face, she braced the phone on her shoulder and went over to get a handful of paper towels, which she threw down over it. Bemusedly, she wondered if Chris had gotten some big molasser breed of dog she didn't know about that liked to drool.

"I thought you said when I gave you the number that you weren't going to call because it's long distance," she said, turning her attention up onto the paper on the table.

"Yeah, but I'm bored. Enduring art appreciation alone isn't fun. So I thought, maybe I can live vicariously through Claire!"

Picking it up, she read:

_Claire,_

_Wesker and I just got a call from work. We have to go in, but it's so early I decided not to wake you. We should be back soon._

_Love,_

_Chris_

Well, at least that explained that.

"So, has anything interesting happened? Your brother's on a SWAT team, right? Any heart pounding life or death situations pop up?"

"No."

"Aw."

"But there is a serial killer on the loose."

"Ooh. Like Jack the Ripper?"

"More like Hannibal Lecter. He's a cannibal."

"Ew."

"Yeah."

Claire opened the fridge and glanced around, but all she saw was leftover pizza, leftover Chinese, and leftover Indian. Shutting it with a sigh, she turned to the cabinets.

"Did you at least get to see the Police Station and meet everyone? Are they cool?"

Claire grimaced slightly, even as she miraculously managed to dig out a box of pancake mix from behind a few cans of soup.

"Yes, I went to the Station and I met everyone."

"And? I can hear the 'and'."

"And . . . Chris is dating someone."

"And you hate her?"

Claire hesitated, staring blankly at the back of the box as she decided what to say.

"_Him_," she finally came out with. "I hate _him_. But hate's too strong of a word, really. He's okay."

"_Him_?" Elza repeated incredulously. "You mean . . . you mean your brother is . . ."

"Gay," Claire confirmed.

"Wow . . . are you upset?"

"No. I just . . ."

"Don't like his boyfriend. Gotcha. Is he an asshole?"

"No, he's polite. He just—"

A bell sounded distantly on the other line, and Elza cut in. "Sorry Claire, that means I gotta go. Talk to you later, okay?"

"Bye," she said, and hung up.

After mixing the batter and turning the heat on under the skillet, she poured some in and stood there waiting for the tiny bubbles to appear on the surface. Thrilling as it was, boredom set in quickly, so she walked back into the living room and hit the power button on the TV, just to create some background noise.

It tuned in to a local news channel.

"—the discovery of the bodies early this morning has prompted a wider investigation into similar mauling deaths in the Raccoon Forest which were originally written off as animal attacks—"

Claire's gaze snapped immediately to the screen, and the headline she found there under the words 'Breaking News' dimmed her appetite slightly.

_Children found murdered in Raccoon Forest._

.

"Fuck."

It was really the only thing Alyssa Ashcroft could say at the moment.

Beside her, Ben gave disgusted sigh and shifted in his folding chair, the pad of his thumb rubbing back and forth along the side of his notepad. He'd been unusually quiet, probably due to him reflecting on the thorough _fucking_ they'd just received.

So much work into that article, and now, only a few days before its publishing, Irons decided to hold a press conference to reveal all the details to every reporter in the city. Their breaking news was no longer _theirs_ anymore, but goddamn _communal._ Every hack in the county was going to be writing about the same damn thing.

"I should've found somebody in the Department to fuck for information a long time ago," she muttered, shaking her head. Ben shot her a look, but she met it head on. "It would've been better than _this._"

She flung her hand out, encompassing the room they were sitting it. It was one that clearly showed the building's past as an art museum: pillar lined red walls were interspersed with gold lattices and elegant light fixtures; marble floors led up to a stage with a desk bearing the seal of the Raccoon Police Department, a line of three identical busts affixed to the wall behind it. Torches built into the busts' fronts drew their fire from an antique furnace sitting off to the left.

Currently, the room was filled to capacity with reporters eagerly waiting for Irons and Wesker to make an appearance.

"Irons would probably sleep with you," Bertolucci said thoughtfully.

"But he wouldn't give me any information," she replied, even as she gave a little shudder at the thought. She wasn't _that_ desperate.

"Speak of the Devil," he murmured a second later, eyes darting in the direction of the carved blue door that was the room's only entrance and exit. It had opened, admitting Irons, Branagh, and Wesker, the last of whom was followed by his ever-loyal dog, Redfield. He followed them up to the stage but stood way off the side, by some of the uniformed cops who had lined up along the wall.

Once they sat down at the desk, Wesker was the one who did the talking.

"At approximately 4:30 this morning, the Raccoon City Police Department received a call from a man who claimed that he had just found his two daughters, Rebecca, nine, and Priscilla, seven, dead several hundred feet away from their campsite in the Raccoon Forest. Upon responding, paramedics confirmed that both girls were deceased, seemingly from an animal attack."

Alyssa snorted quietly.

"However, upon further investigation by the Medical Examiner's Office, many of the bites on the bodies were determined to be human in origin. In light of this, the case has been ruled a homicide, and the S.T.A.R.S Unit assigned to the investigation."

A hand raised in the crowd. Wesker nodded.

"Are the parents persons of interest?"

"No. Currently we're working under the assumption that the children wandered, or were lured, away by their murderers."

Another hand. "Then there is more than one suspect?"

"The bite marks would indicate so, yes."

Alyssa raised her hand. Wesker ignored her.

"Do you have any suspects currently?"

"No."

Alyssa waved it back and forth slightly, wiggling her fingers. Again, he picked someone else.

"Were the children cannibalized, or just bitten?"

"There are . . . signs of them having been cannibalized."

She rolled her eyes at that. If the other victims were any indication, those were some _neon_ signs.

"Is it true that there have been a string of mauling deaths in the Forest lately?"

Wesker nodded. "There have been an unusually high number of deaths among hikers and campers in the past months."

"Do you think the deaths may be connected?"

"We're looking into it."

Alyssa had never been a patient woman, and she was under no delusions that Wesker was just accidently overlooking her. So she took matters into her own hands.

"Isn't it true that the Raccoon City Police Department has been aware of the possible presence of a serial killer in the Forest for some time, but did nothing about it?" she demanded, rising slightly from her seat.

He tilted his head the slightest bit in her direction. "No, Ms. Ashcroft. The other deaths were all ruled animal attacks, not homicide. We are only reinvestigating them in light of this incident."

"You're saying that the Coroner didn't once notice a human bite mark on the other victims?"

"Some of the victims were mauled too badly for that determination to be made, while dog bites were found on others. It's very questionable whether the deaths are connected or not."

_Right,_ she wanted to hiss.

During her experiences with him, Wesker always lied with such ease that sometimes, she wondered whether he was a police Captain or a spin doctor.

.

Sergei felt his lips turn up in a small smirk at Comrade Wesker's impressive performance on the television. Such a very sincere public servant he seemed.

"—_all of our manpower. These murders _will_ be solved—"_

He knew it had to come out in the press sooner or later, but he still cursed those two little brats for dying. Now, Umbrella was not only dealing with the contamination of the Arklay Lab, but an investigation into the forest surrounding it.

He was still at a loss to explain where the zombies were coming from. His men had cleared the entire area, only for more creatures to appear not even a day later. The Mansion hadn't even been infected at that point, eliminating that at as a potential source.

So then, _where?_

"Ahem."

Sergei slowly glanced over and down, his eyes resting on the top of Comrade Birkin's blond head. The man looked up, meeting his eyes, a bit of a glare hidden in his gaze.

Comrade Birkin had never liked him, and probably liked him even less since he had arrived in his office to wait impatiently for the results of the tests they had preformed to find the source of the Mansion's outbreak.

That was okay, though. Sergei didn't need to be liked by an arrogant little scientist who believed a man's only value came from his intelligence.

"The results," he said shortly, handing over the manila folder in his hand. Sergei flipped it open and browsed the pages within, even as Birkin narrated the findings.

"Traces of the virus were found in many things—shampoos, conditioners, soaps, food—but they all had one thing in common: they either contained, or were in a position to come in contact with, the Mansion's water. Which was saturated with T."

"Someone purposefully contaminated it," Sergei murmured, narrowing his eyes at the words and charts on the page.

"Indeed," Birkin said. "Now if only we knew who."

Where did the creatures come from? Who contaminated the water?

The questions seemed inexorably linked.

Sergei closed the folder, tapping it against his arm as he thought for a moment. Eventually, he said: "Comrade Birkin. How long have you lived in Raccoon City?"

Birkin stared at him suspiciously for a moment, but replied. "Twenty one years."

"Twenty one years," Sergei repeated. "Just as long as Comrade Wesker."

Birkin stiffened almost imperceptibly at the mention of the man's name. Sergei found it very curious.

"Tell me, are you aware of what's been going on in the forest around the Mansion recently?" He gestured to the television, where Wesker was still playing with the reporters.

Birkin stuck his nose up. "I've been too busy with my research to pay any attention to it. That's what the UBCS is for, isn't it?"

Sergei didn't like the slightly derisive stress he put on the acronym, but he resisted the urge to grab for his halberd. "But you've heard."

"Yes."

"Don't you wonder why carriers are roaming the forest?"

"I assumed they were getting sloppy about the disposal process at the Mansion."

"No. That's been checked into, and all test subjects are accounted for. You . . . wouldn't happen to be aware of any other place in the forest that might be the source?"

Birkin paused, eyes narrowing thoughtfully as he stared at the television screen.

"Well," he said finally. "There's the old Management Training Facility."

.

Author's Note: OMFG. IT HAS ALMOST BEEN A WHOLE YEAR SINCE I LAST UPDATED! I mean . . . I mean . . . What is this I don't even . . .

I mean, it's been a busy year (I got a puppy! :D) but my procrastination has also elevated itself to a level never before seen. But, at least I do have some ideas for the next chapter, and I'm going to write it by my birthday if it _kills_ me.

So, I even managed to crank out some porn, but if any of you are familiar with anything else I've written, you should know that I really suck at writing it. :(

Thank you so much for all the reviews! I'm so sorry about the wait!

-Anna

PS: Is anyone else FUCKING EXCITED about Revelations and Operation Raccoon City?


	10. The Devil On The Doorstep

Sherry was in a very good mood when she walked into school on Monday. The previous Friday had been one of the best days she'd had in a long time—her father had taken her to the zoo, the theater, the mall, and the park, and then, at the end of the day, to her favorite restaurant. He'd been a little distracted throughout the day, but that hadn't mattered—what was important was that they'd spent so much time together.

Of course, he'd gone immediately back into work on Saturday, but she was hopeful that maybe, his spontaneous day off meant he was changing for the better. Maybe he'd even take her out again sometime soon!

That thought made her especially cheerful as she walked into school, her backpack slung painfully over her shoulder. On Friday, they'd briefly stopped by the school in the afternoon so her father could run in the office and pick up the paper telling her what assignments she'd missed, as well as all the textbooks that went with them.

Now she was toting them all back, the material of her bag straining to keep them in. Top heavy and awkward, she ambled her way past the empty classrooms to the cafeteria, where all the early arrivals were kept until their homeroom teachers arrived.

She was really in no hurry to get there and surround herself in the noisy chaos all the other children seemed to like so much, but as the cafeteria doors entered her sight, she was slightly relieved that she'd at least be able to sit down and take the damn backpack off.

Pushing on the door's crash bar, she stepped inside and immediately noticed that something was wrong.

The most obvious thing was that it wasn't nearly as loud as it usually was—on most days, all the voices twisted together into one indecipherable cacophony of _sound_. But today, all she could hear was an undercurrent of fast whispers, almost white noise, the wisp of air through moving lips.

The next thing only became apparent with a closer look. Everyone seemed different. No one had any energy. Nobody was running around or throwing things at each other—even the boys were behaving, for once. Everybody was just . . . _sitting._ Sitting and whispering.

This strangeness had had an equal affect on the teachers as well. Usually they paced and prowled, watching for anyone to misbehave _just_ badly enough for them to punish. But today, they were all huddled in a group near the staff table, talking lowly amongst themselves and barely even watching them at all.

Even their computer teacher was over there with them, and Sherry had _never_ known her to pass up any opportunities to deal out punishment. Any other day, she walked between the lunch tables, waiting for an excuse to assign detention. (She was a real _bitch_, in Sherry's opinion. That was a word she'd learned from Daddy, who'd used it once to describe someone he'd worked with a long time ago. She wasn't supposed to know it, though, so she only ever said it in her mind.)

Slowly, Sherry stepped further into the room and started in the direction of the sixth grade tables. She felt odd, somehow, like her footsteps were very loud and apart from the snippets of whispers her ears managed to catch.

"—I heard that—"

"—ripped them apart—"

"—I can't believe—"

"—don't understand how this could've happened—"

"—things like this don't happen here—"

"—aren't _supposed_ to happen here—"

"—who would ever—"

"—didn't deserve—"

"—can't be happening, it just can't—"

"It'll be okay, Moira," she heard a girl say as she passed by the second grade table. The speaker wasn't a second grader, however—she looked more like a kindergartener.

"It'll be okay," she repeated, her arms wrapped around an older girl, who was crying. "Daddy'll catch them, you know he will . . ."

Sherry was frowning deeply by the time she reached the right table, as unnerved as she was confused. Her backpack hitting the ground with a resounding thump, she sunk down onto the bench and glanced over at her classmates. All the girls were sitting close together for once, the ones (the _bitches_) who were prissy and popular whispering to the ones who weren't.

Sherry almost asked what was going on, but she decided against it at the last second. She'd always been outcast even among the outcasts.

.

Sergei took a long, hard look Comrade Wesker's list. It was several pages long, with each name written out, then followed by a brief summary of the reasons they might be motivated to go on a crusade against the company.

Nothing really popped out at him. The majority of them were generic grievances that any company would have to deal with—employees fired under bad circumstances, someone passed over for a promotion or an increase in funding, and so on and so forth.

Still, he would ensure that every name on the list was thoroughly investigated. Even if they weren't responsible for this particular incident, there was no reason to let grudges fester.

For now, however, he was more curious about something else.

Dr. Birkin's mention of the Management Training Facility wasn't the first time Sergei had heard about it, exactly. He'd known, vaguely, that it was there, but he hadn't given it any thought, because to the best of his knowledge, it was abandoned, and had been for at least ten or so years.

He'd asked Birkin why he might think it could be the source, but all he'd done in reply was give a noncommittal shrug and say something about, "the old discarded experiments in the sewers."

"Comrade Wesker," Sergei said now, setting the list aside and looking up. Wesker's head tilted slightly in his direction, the only acknowledgement that he was listening.

"What do you know about the old Management Training Facility in Raccoon Forest?"

If he was surprised by the question, he didn't show it. "There isn't much to say. It's been closed for years."

"Were experiments conducted there?"

"Yes. Some by the students, but the majority by Dr. Marcus."

Sergei had heard that name before, but much like with the Training Facility, he didn't know many of the details. Marcus had been one of Umbrella's founders alongside Spencer and Ashford, but beyond that . . .

"He was the Director of the Facility," Wesker clarified.

"What type of experiments did he perform?"

"They all had to do with the Progenitor Virus. He used . . ." His lip curled, very slightly. " . . . leeches in most of them."

"Did the research go anywhere?"

Wesker gave the exact same noncommittal little shrug Birkin had the day before. "It contributed to Birkin's later work on T."

"And Marcus himself?"

"He was eventually . . . fired."

"_Fired_," he repeated. A word that didn't always mean simply _let go_.

"He had become a liability," Wesker said succinctly. "By 1988, he had become a reclusive, paranoid old man who killed assistants in droves and refused to share his research with the other scientists. He was holding the Company back. Mister Spencer, therefore, felt it prudent to . . . have the problem dealt with."

"What became of the Training Facility?"

"It had already been out of use by Company employees for ten years by then. The only one who used it was Marcus, and once he was no longer there, it was locked up and forgotten. I imagine it's falling apart by now."

"But during the time it was functioning—how were the experiments disposed of?"

"Badly," Wesker admitted. "There's a sewage plant connected to the facility—we dumped them in the water."

Sergei nodded and hmmed, running the pads of his fingers up and down the edge of his halberd. The skin grew thinner each time, until it finally snapped and a bead of blood slipped down the surface of the knife.

He stared at it. Imagined that there was a virus living in it, and that the sliver metal it rested on was actually water. One drop was all it took to contaminate an entire sea.

In his mind's eye, he could almost picture all the rotting bodies floating in the water, their fluids seeping out until it was thick and stagnant and oh so infectious.

Maybe that water was leaking somewhere. That wouldn't necessarily explain how so many humans had gotten access to it, but it was a start.

Flicking the blood off the halberd, he looked back to Wesker.

"I want you to make contact with your old friend, Doctor Birkin. I have a mission for you."

.

Monica supposed she liked Annette Birkin well enough. She was something of a bitch, one of those cutthroat career women, but finding fault with her for that would be like the pot calling the kettle black.

No, all in all, there were much worse bosses than Birkin, especially in a company like Umbrella. At least she didn't use her assistants in her experiments. (Dear, sweet Yoko was still recovering from that one unfortunate incident she'd been involved in.)

But today, Monica was very quickly running out of patience with the woman. They were all sealed up in this lab to _work_. They weren't here to make friends, or chitchat, or bitch _all day long_ about their fucking husbands.

Their research had taken a backburner to Birkin's nonstop ranting about the other Doctor Birkin, who had apparently announced that he was divorcing her a few days ago. (Monica just couldn't imagine _why_.)

They'd been in the labs all day long and they'd only gotten a few hours worth of work done. Now Monica was tired and irritated and _extremely_ pissed. The only thing keeping her sane was the thought of coffee, but as soon as she stepped into the break room, she found that, lo and behold, the pot was empty, as was the canister sitting next to the machine.

"_Fuck, fuck,_ _**fuck**_**!**" she yelled, as loudly as she dared. Turning on her heels, she stomped over to the cabinets along the back wall and ripped one of them open. They weren't very full, but it still took some rooting around to find a new canister. It was a shitty brand, but whatever.

With it in hand, she started back towards the counter with the machine, glancing as she did so at a man who had appeared in the room while her back was turned.

He was standing over by another section of the counter, facing away from her, but she could tell from his hair that he was old, and unlike practically everyone else in the facility, he wasn't wearing a lab coat. Instead, he had on a brown business suit.

She didn't think it was someone she'd ever seen around before. Maybe he was a new hire.

Or, she mused as she scooped the ground coffee into the top of the machine, maybe he was here to see Doctor Birkin. Apparently, he liked getting rather than giving, if what Annette said was true.

Feeling a tiny bit of her annoyance and anger dissipate at the amusing thought, she closed the lid and hit the button. It always took a year for the thing to actually make the damn coffee, so all she could do was stand around and drum her fingers on the countertop.

Her eyes strayed, never focusing on any one thing. They glanced from the pot to the sugar and back again, then over onto the shiny surface of the stainless steel refrigerator.

Where they stayed.

At first, she wasn't really sure what she was seeing. The reflection wasn't a good one, but she could make out some of the room behind her, and see the silhouette of the man.

Which was moving. Strangely.

The first thing that she really registered was the arm. His right arm, hanging by his side, seemed to be getting longer and longer the more she watched. It eeked down, the fingers stretching out until they almost brushed the floor, the elbow joint having entirely disappeared.

Then she noticed that his clothes were . . . rustling. That was the only word she could come up with to describe the way they seemed to move. It caused the reflection to shimmer and ripple across the surface of the doors with increasing intensity, a continuous wet squelching providing an accompanying sound.

For a second, she just stared blankly. She had no idea what it was. Even after all the failed experiments and the BOWs she'd observed during her time with Umbrella, she'd never seen anything like it.

Nor, for that matter, did she have any idea how it got into the break room.

In fact, the only thing she really knew for certain was one thing: six feet away from a BOW with no protective glass was _not _somewhere she wanted to be.

Very, very slowly, Monica turned and walked out of the room, holding her breath each step of the way.

.

When she returned fifteen minutes later accompanied by both Birkins and an entire squad of guards who burst into the room with automatic rifles at the ready, the man was gone.

Where he had been standing, all they found was a thick layer of _slime_.

.

John knew that it was dangerous to be out walking the halls of the Mansion, but the knowledge that he was dying seemed to have dimmed his self-preservation instincts somewhat. After all, what was the worst that could happen to him? He'd be eaten by one of the escaped BOWs? At least that would be quicker, and he might even stay dead.

Of course, it wasn't absolutely _certain_ that he was infected. That is, he didn't have any actual scientific proof. He hadn't taken the test yet.

But, as much as he tried to deny it, to hang on to some shred of hope, he already knew. His symptoms were textbook, identical to the ones he'd seen his coworkers suffer with shortly before they ended up having to be shot in the head.

It was numbing, knowing that one day someone was probably going to do the same to him, and that it would be the _best_ outcome. Because the alternative . . .

Lately, even as things fell apart and corpses piled up and experiments escaped their cages, John had taken to wandering the building to keep his mind off it. He'd worked there for quite awhile, but he'd spent most of his time in the labs, and had never really taken the time to appreciate the Mansion's aesthetics.

The furnishings were all expensive and elegant; paintings, all originals, hung on the walls; porcelain vases and marble statues sat on tables and shelves. And the architecture was brilliant, if one overlooked all the traps—gothic and powerful in some places, subtle and refined in others. A perfect balance.

What a pretty place to die, he sometimes tried to think. Pretty, pretty, pretty, at least you have that much . . .

But no matter how hard he looked, and for how long, the Mansion never truly seemed anything but hollow, a dead body dressed up to look nice. It wasn't beautiful. Nothing was, anymore.

To him, everything beautiful was gone.

.

.

Author's Note: Crappy filler chapter is crappy. But I haven't been in much of a writing mood lately because my cat died last Saturday. I'm only just starting to kind of come out of the depression, but I still feel horrible. :(

Anyway, thanks for your reviews-they really helped cheer me up.

-Anna

PS: If anyone can find the (pretty obvious) reference to The Suffering, I'll like . . . write you something, or dedicate a chapter to you. I swear. I love that game, so much.


	11. You Were Always On My Mind

Wesker stared at the water in the bottom of his glass.

It was perfectly clean and clear, like a well polished crystal, it's surface sparkling as it reflected the kitchen lights overhead. Little beads of perspiration had accumulated on the outside of the glass, trailing tantalizingly downwards to the edge.

He licked his lips. He was _extremely_ thirsty. Other than a cup of the horrid coffee made in the RPD break room, he didn't think he'd had anything to drink all day.

But now, holding the glass, he hesitated. Swallowed, letting thick saliva slide down his throat, and thought about the Mansion.

All those poor, pathetic scientists, doomed to die by doing the exact same thing he was just about to.

Water from the tap. On the surface, it looked perfectly innocuous. Dig a little deeper, however, and you might find something horrifying.

Just like Raccoon City.

He swiveled his wrist, watching idly as the water sloshed up against the sides. Then he tipped it over the sink.

"Chris!" he called. "We're out of bottled water!"

"Oh no!" was the muffled reply. "We'll all thirst to death! It's not like we can just drink from the _tap_. You know, that source of infinite water in the middle of the kitchen? And the bathroom?"

Wesker didn't even bother gracing that with a reply. He just picked up his keys and made for the front door. "I'll be at the store."

Claire's head popped out of the bedroom in a flash of red hair. "I'll go with you!" she announced, scurrying over to stand beside him.

He narrowed his eyes at her, debating what her ulterior motive—_and there was one, no doubt about that—_could be. "Is there something you would like me to get for you?" he inquired, polite yet stiffly enough to let her know her company wasn't particularly wanted.

"Uh . . . I'm very particular about my shopping. You know us college girls—all that organic and granola and stuff. You probably wouldn't even be able to find it." She smiled then, looking just a bit predatory. "Not to mention, there's a serial killer on the loose. Nobody should be going out alone, should they?"

Maybe not for a hike, but he didn't think he was going to be mauled to death in the middle of the frozen foods aisle. Still, it was clear she wasn't going to let up.

Staring at her silently until her smile finally faded a bit, he turned on his heel and exited the apartment, her right behind him.

Chris watched them leave, looking simply _delighted_ at the fact that they were doing something together—apparently, he had missed the finer points of their interaction.

.

"Are you preparing for a drought? Or are you just allergic to tap water?"

Wesker let the third case of bottled water fall into the cart, thudding dully as it landed on top of the other two. Then he added a gallon jug for good measure as he answered Redfield's questions.

"The water in this city is . . ." He grasped for a way to describe it. " . . . potentially unhealthy."

She blinked, clutching her box of graham crackers just a fraction tighter. "'Unhealthy' . . . how? I mean—I've been drinking it the entire time I've been here!"

"Then I suppose you may want to refrain from doing so in the future."

She scowled. "You're not a very warm person, are you?"

That almost got a smirk out of him. _'Warm'_? At Umbrella, that would only make you weak, and that, in turn, would lead to death sooner rather than later.

Huffing a bit, she threw the cracker box into the cart and swiveled around, eyes scanning over the shelves. He followed her at a leisurely pace, arms folded over the handle of the cart, and surveyed what she'd collected so far.

He didn't see anything organic, or anything that contained granola. There wasn't even any fruit, just junk. Not that he'd ever actually considered that was why she came along—he'd already seen how she ate these past few days, and the word picky didn't factor into it.

Of course, she seemed to have lost the courage to bring up whatever it was she wanted to discuss with him. She fiddled nervously with everything she picked up before depositing it in the cart, and shot glances back at him every time she thought he wasn't looking. She even opened her mouth a few times, only to immediately close it and turn away.

It was only after an hour of this, when they were about to move on from the vegetable section to the checkout, that she rounded on him and spit it out.

"How serious are you about my brother?"

Wesker almost gave a startled bark of laughter. After all her hesitation, _that_ was her question? How . . . banal.

"Because," she continued, hands on her hips, "he's really serious about you. I can tell. He's in love with you. Are you in love with him? Or are you just—just—"

"Just?"

"Using him!"

He arched his eyebrows. "What would make you think that?"

"You're his boss! It could be sexual harassment!"

Wesker almost rolled his eyes the sheer incoherency of it: first she says Chris is in love with him, and then she accuses him of sexually harassing him. Those didn't particularly mix.

"I assure you, Miss Redfield, that Chris is an excellent pointman and did not need any arrangement with me to get where he is. Nor do I extort sexual favors from any of my subordinates."

That seemed to appease her, somewhat, but she didn't let it go: "But are you serious about him? This isn't just a—I don't know, a fling for you or something, is it? Because if it is, I'll—"

"We've been together for two years. I think it's safe to say that if I wasn't serious, it would've ended a long time ago."

She nodded thoughtfully. "Good. That's—really good. But—but do you love him?"

His first inclination, his automatic response, was to scoff. Love. He didn't love—he didn't even think he was capable, or if he once had been, he wasn't anymore. Birkin had seen to that.

Oh, how he'd loved Birkin. Maybe it hadn't been exactly what other people might've considered 'love'—there were no sweaty palms or nervous stomachs involved, he hadn't obsessed over him every moment of everyday, he wouldn't have been willing to die for him—but he _had_ loved him. It had been scorching and hot, burning deep.

But love, much like life, was cheap. It only took two words to destroy it all.

"_Annette's pregnant."_

The cheating little bastard.

Now Chris . . . Chris would never be unfaithful. Wesker knew that much. The man was loyal to a fault—he _would_ probably die for him, if it came down to it. Stupid, of course, but still admirable in a way.

Wesker was fond of Chris. It wasn't the same kind of intense, scalding fire that he had for Birkin, something that burned out just as quickly as it came, but a slow, creeping sensation of contentment and happiness that lasted.

Happiness . . .

He'd never really thought about it before, but Chris made him . . . happy.

It was almost like an epiphany, something that he'd been taking for granted all this time and therefore hadn't even noticed: Chris made him very, very happy.

Birkin never had, not this way, not when it was always about competition and work. He was intellectually stimulating and once upon a time, Wesker had enjoyed being around him, but Chris . . . wasn't like anyone he'd ever known before. He didn't have any expectations. He didn't want anything from him. He didn't have ulterior motives, wasn't playing a game of cloaks and daggers. He just was. Wesker could be whoever he wanted with him.

And that was . . . refreshing.

He'd honestly thought he couldn't love anymore, then again, he hadn't given it any thought in twelve years. Only now, on reflection, did he realize with a sharp intake of breath:

"Actually, Claire . . . I believe I do."

.

Chris was spaced out so far that he didn't even notice the chill of the morgue anymore, a large grin on his face.

It wasn't long before Jill snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Could you try _not_ to smile like an idiot right before the autopsies of two little girls?"

The grin vanished immediately, even as his eyes widened at her uncharacteristic snappishness. "Sorry, Jill . . . I wasn't smiling about that."

Her expression softened, becoming almost apologetic. "I know. I just . . ."

"No, you don't have to explain." His eyes drifted over, to the two stainless steal tables across the room. White sheets were pulled up over the bodies on them, but even still, some splotches of blood had seeped through in places.

"What has you so cheerful?" asked Jill, staring at him searchingly.

He felt a bit guilty now. A family had lost both their daughters, their only children, in one day, and here he was, smiling as he was about to witness the autopsies. It just didn't seem to be fair to be happy when someone else was suffering so much, especially over something as minor as Claire and Wesker going grocery shopping together.

But he couldn't help it—he was goddamn _ecstatic _that the two most important people in his life were starting to warm up to each other. He'd been so afraid there at the beginning that they never would.

Of course, he couldn't tell Jill any of that. He didn't particularly like keeping secrets from her, but what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

"It's nothing, just something Claire did last night," he said, trying not to sound too glaringly dismissive.

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, unsatisfied with his vagueness, but he was saved by the entry of the coroner, who was pulling on gloves.

Jill was thankfully called back to focus on the matter at hand, and they both made their way over to the tables, faces grim.

The coroner readied his tape recorder and surgical tools and pulled back the first sheet. Priscilla.

Jill exhaled through her teeth. "Why couldn't Wesker have been here today?"

Chris shrugged, eyes focused on the coroner's hands as he began the Y-incision. "Something about going over the results of the forensics tests with Irons."

"He's always with Irons recently," she muttered, reaching up a hand to cover her nose and mouth. The stench of blood and decay had been reduced somewhat by the freezer the bodies had been in, but it came back full force as soon as the skin was opened, more fully exposing what was left of the rotting organs.

There wasn't much.

The coroner heaved his rib cutters and began systematically cutting them away, each bone breaking with a sharp, sick crack.

Chris fleetingly thought of a time just a little while ago, when seeing the mutilated body of a child autopsied would've made him sick.

He wondered what it said about him that it didn't anymore.

.

Wesker took a sip from his water bottle and drummed the fingers of his other hand against the control panel it rested on. Next to him, Birkin was all jitters, a coffee thermos clenched in his hands as he watched the Investigation Team continue their sweep of the Management Training Facility.

So far, they hadn't found much of anything. The place was frozen in 1988, layers of dust gathering over the remnants of its last occupant. Marcus's office hadn't been touched, all of his leftover experiments were long dead in jars, his notes were ancient enough to be on the verge of crumbling at the touch—_nothing _was out of place_._ Even the basement seemed normal—the torture chamber was just as Wesker remembered it.

Still, Vladimir was insisting on a full sweep, which meant Wesker had to stay in this control room and babysit all day.

Birkin was just _itching_ to talk about his impending divorce. He was doing the same thing Redfield had the previous night—glancing at him, licking his lips, opening his mouth but ultimately not saying anything.

Wesker really didn't care anything about the dissolution of the Birkin marriage. He really didn't care anything about _Birkin_. Not anymore.

He'd thought Birkin understood that, but apparently he didn't.

"I filed yesterday," he finally said, fingering the rim of the thermos.

Wesker hmmed noncommittally.

"I, uh—I want full custody of Sherry. Which shouldn't be too hard, I mean, in _this_ city. Spencer'll bend over backwards for me. I think I'll have him transfer Annette somewhere else. Far away, preferably. Maybe Antarctica. Keep stupid Alexia's frozen corpse company."

He still wasn't over Ashford, it seemed. Unsurprising.

"Sherry won't miss her. They're not close. The whole process shouldn't actually take too long—"

Resisting the urge to reach up and rub his temples—he was sure he felt a migraine coming on—Wesker cut him off. "I fail to see how your divorce is my business."

Birkin's fingers went white around the thermos. "I—I—_yes_, I think it is. It is if I want it to be!"

"So you've told all your colleagues about your plans to have your ex-wife sent packing to the Antarctic?"

He ground his teeth, his jaw tightening. "We're. _not._ just colleagues."

"Oh, yes. You're right. We're not even colleagues anymore. We haven't worked in the same division for seven years."

Birkin hissed in annoyance and dragged a hand down his face, turning away for a moment. Wesker spared him a glance out of the corner of his eye before refocusing his attention on the monitors, content to ignore him.

The team still hadn't reached the sewers yet, but they were getting closer, most of them milling around the chapel or the rooms beneath it. Wesker still wasn't sure if he could anticipate finishing this with enough time to get back to the RPD before the end of the workday, but he was beginning to hope. Using 'meetings with Irons' as an excuse was starting to wear thin, and the McGee autopsies were today. He still wasn't entirely sure of how to go about preventing their inevitable reanimation—the amount of damage done to their corpses ensured they wouldn't be particularly _mobile_ zombies, but the Medical Examiner would still notice when they started flopping around on their slabs.

The girls' parents wanted their bodies released as soon as possible for burial, and what with the amount of media attention their deaths had garnered, he really didn't think they could get away with burning them like the others. Maybe he could try inserting an ice pick into their nasal cavities or orbits and reaching the brain that way . . .

"Marrying Annette was a mistake," Birkin said suddenly. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, staring down at Wesker with bloodshot blue eyes. "I knew that from the beginning, really, I did."

"If only you'd thought that fucking her would be a mistake, too—just imagine the possibilities."

Birkin cringed. "I don't regret Sherry!" he insisted.

"Did I say you did?"

"I—I just—I was never _in love_ with Annette. I did love her, but I wasn't _in love_. Not like . . ."

"I don't care about your hair splitting, Birkin. Did you really think that just because you're divorcing her I'd come running back? After twelve years?"

"I'm not doing this for _you_."

"_Really_? That _is_ surprising. But, either way, it doesn't matter. I don't care about what you do with your life. We're not friends."

Birkin's lips twisted up into a hideous sneer, his muscles tensing, and Wesker was well aware of what was coming: a tantrum. He'd had them at the drop of a hat during Alexia Ashford's time with Umbrella, and even after fifteen years, Wesker could still spot the warning signs.

"I bet you wouldn't be so quick to brush me off if you didn't have that—that—that _trained ape_ following you around!" he shouted, slamming his thermos down on the console so that both his hands were free to gesticulate. "Or do you like them like that, all muscle and no brains? I never knew you were so lacking in taste! And how _old_ is he? Robbing the cradle nowadays, are we, Al? And what do you—"

Birkin kept ranting, his mouth moving rapidly and his face flushing, but the actual words were drowned out by a sudden burst of noise in Wesker's headset.

Caught off guard, he reached up and straightened it and turned his gaze up to the monitors, searching for any new occurrences. He didn't see anything, literally—the team seemed to have finally descended down into the treatment plant, and there weren't many cameras down there.

"Alpha Team," he said, tapping the side of the earpiece. "Alpha Team, respond."

Silence, all around. Even Birkin had fallen quiet, still angry but now curious as well.

"Alpha Team," he tried again, more sharply. "Report. What is your status?"

Silence. They both searched the screens for anything, even a hint, but everything was still.

"_Alpha Team_," he began for the third time. "_Respond._"

And this time, to his surprise, he did get one.

Screams.

.

_Yersinia Pestis_. A simple little bacteria, usually not widely spread among the human population. It most frequently cycled between fleas and marmots on the Mongolian Steppe, self contained and harmless to the world at large.

Latch it onto the right carrier, however, and it spreads like a wildfire, traveling through human and animal populations with enough speed to cover Europe in two years and leave millions dead in its wake.

Rats are such interesting little creatures, going about their lives in the dark and the filth, scrounging for whatever food they can find. Their populations increase drastically when food is plentiful, like it usually is in a sewer, and in the pursuit of feeding themselves, they can get almost anywhere, squeezing into the tightest spaces and climbing the highest walls.

Nowhere is safe from a hungry rat.

Marcus smiles as he leans down and pets their greasy little backs. They move under his fingers, chubby bodies twitching as they eat at a pile of trash.

Then he shatters the vial on the stone sewer floor.

.

.

Author's Note: OH MY GOD WHERE HAVE I BEEN FOR SO LONG? I DON'T EVEN KNOW. My procrastination has reached epic new levels, everybody. But I'm going to have surgery in a few days (nothing too major) and it kind of jolted me into writing. :)

So. Revelations was, uh . . . okay. But I think I can honestly say that I liked RE: Survivor better than Operation Raccoon City. And the RE6 trailer? Ugh. Just no.

Might, after MANY CHAPTERS, be getting to the actual main event of this story? It's a miracle!

Thanks for reviewing,

-Anna


	12. Seven Devils All Around You

His hands were shaking.

In the last twenty four hours, his body had begun rapidly losing strength, his nerves weakening under the sway of the virus. It felt like everything inside him was petrifying, his bones bending beneath muscles and tendons that refused to cooperate. Walking was an effort—just traveling across a room left him panting and in pain, his knees unsteady and burning.

Writing was difficult as well, with his trembling hands. His fingers no longer had much grip strength either, which made the letters even more illegible, but he tried his best, tracing each one out painstakingly, blinking his eyes each time his vision started to fail.

He had so much he wanted to say, enough to fill up a thousand pages. When you're a few minutes from apocalypse and you have one last chance to be heard, where do you begin? How can you cut it short?

But the virus didn't give him a choice. He was forced to narrow it all down to a page, a few simple words telling Ada that he loved her, and that if somehow, someday, she ever got this letter, he had one final request of her—_get Umbrella_.

He could barely fold it and get it in the envelope. He printed her name in big, shaky writing on the front, only three letters but still so difficult for him to do.

He left it lying on the desk as he slid to the cold concrete floor. He was so hot and itchy and nauseous, but he barely even noticed it anymore. All he really felt was the _hunger_.

He wished he were braver. Suicide was supposed to be the coward's way out, but no, no, he didn't think so, not anymore. It took so much courage to end it yourself. Even knowing he was going to die either way, and that he was going to come back an abomination, he couldn't put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Slowly, he slid his hand across his chest, up to his breast pocket. It felt like each of his fingers weighed a thousand pounds, but somehow he managed to pull out a cigarette and his lighter.

Before the outbreak, he hadn't smoked in a long time, not since he was studying abroad in Spain. His roommate had gotten him started and it had been difficult to quit, but in the last few days, he'd taken it back up. Trapped as he was, there wasn't much other pleasure to be gotten out of the remainder of his life.

He managed to get the tip of the cigarette in his mouth before his hand fell back to the ground, a dead weight. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a choking laugh, the taste of blood blooming across his tongue as it seeped out and ran down his chin.

It was a little bit amusing, him dying during one last smoke. What a very Luis thing to do—he'd be proud.

So John lay there on the concrete, watching pillars of smoke drift up to the grey ceiling until he couldn't see anything at all.

.

George Hamilton was moving on automatic. He really couldn't remember the last time he'd slept—two days ago, maybe? Three? He'd been running on coffee for quite a while, but even the caffeine was beginning to lose its effect.

Being a surgeon, his hours had never been particularly _good_, but they weren't horrible either, not like an ER doctor's. Barring the occasional emergency, he was able to get home at a reasonable hour and rest before he came back in the morning, but recently, this had changed.

It started a few days ago. At first there had only been a couple of them mixed in with the usual injuries and illnesses. They mainly complained of flulike symptoms, along with a strange, constant itch all over their bodies. They'd been prescribed antibiotics and skin creams and sent home, but soon they all came back, in much worse condition.

It was rapid after that, with new cases of the same illness beginning to pop up with such frequency that the hospital became overwhelmed. Raccoon General had always been extremely well staffed and equipped for the size of the city it served, but now, it was nowhere near enough.

George, along with majority of the other surgeons, had been drafted to the ER to help examine patients, but there wasn't much point to it. They didn't know what was wrong with them—every test they ran came back negative, and no matter what medical literature they read, nothing described was exactly what they were faced with.

The woman he was examining right now had been in before, according to the records. She'd been given the usual round of antibiotics, obviously to no effect. The symptoms she'd been suffering two days ago seemed mild compared to the present.

She trembled on the examining table, hugging herself as her teeth chattered uncontrollably. The fever causing the shivering was dangerously high, verging on hyperpyrexia, and the skin of her neck practically burned him as he checked her lymph nodes. Severely swollen.

The slight motion of him tilting her head triggered an immediate response, her chest heaving as she lurched forward and gagged. Nothing came up except a long string of bloody bile.

George stared at the mess on the floor, and then at the skin of her forearms, where she had scratched down into the tissue.

"I think we'll check you in . . ."

.

Chris rolled his neck, sighing as it popped. In his lap, his hands pulled open the bag of potato chips he'd gotten from the vending machine down the hall, and he immediately began scarfing them down two at a time. They weren't great, but they were also the first thing he'd had all day, and it had been a _long_ day.

They'd been chasing lead after lead, but none of them had went anywhere. There was DNA evidence on the bodies, retrieved from saliva in the wounds, but it didn't match anything in the system. A few fingerprints were also recovered, with the same results. Mr. and Mrs. McGee, the only possible eyewitnesses, claimed to have not seen or heard anything. And there were, of course, the tips—the police lines had been flooded with people calling in, some lying just for their own amusement, some genuinely certain that their neighbors were child killing cannibals. Others just had a pathological need to confess to things they didn't do.

All of them had been investigated and eliminated. Which left them . . . nowhere. They had nothing, and Chris didn't understand how that was possible.

How did ten people stay invisible? How could a group so large possibly keep such a secret, without at least one of them getting drunk and bragging, or confiding in a friend? Were they all related somehow, which ensured everyone's loyalty?

Chris actually gave a startled bark of laughter as the thought entered his head—he imagined a family of hillbillies, deformed from generations of inbreeding, living somewhere deep in the forest, making furniture covers out of human skin. But wasn't that only supposed to happen in the south?

Chris bit into the last chip and crumpled the bag in his hand, glancing at his watch. He was getting close to the end of his break, but hell, even this hard wooden bench felt pretty good after running around the city all day, and he really wasn't ready to move. Maybe Wesker wouldn't notice if he just sat here for the last hour of the workday . . .?

Yeah, that was doubtful.

With another sigh, this one of resignation rather than satisfaction, he let his head fall against the side of one of the payphones mounted on the wall beside the bench and tried to enjoy the last few minutes of down time.

Across from him, the blue double doors of the detectives' office sat open. He idly watched the people inside work, some of them on their phones, some filling out paperwork. Others were taking down reports from citizens, of which there seemed to be a few more than usual.

A couple of them were filing missing person reports, claiming that _no_, their relatives were _not_ the kind of people to just leave without telling them. One man was complaining about vandalism to his property he'd discovered when he'd gotten home that day, a window that had been broken from the outside, though there hadn't been any sign of burglary. Another man was ranting loudly about a car accident he'd been involved in, saying that it had _most definitely_ been the other driver's fault, and that if they were so sick they had to be rushed to the hospital by the responding paramedics, they shouldn't have been behind the wheel in the first place.

At the desk nearest the doors, Raymond Douglas was taking down the statement of a pale young woman, who had brown hair pulled back into messy ponytail.

"I was almost home," she was saying. Her pupils were blown wide, the green irises barely visible as her eyes darted around Douglas's face. "I could even see my yard. But I was so goddamn thirsty I couldn't stand it, so I stopped to finish my water. I didn't even hear anyone come up, but suddenly, this _fucker _is _grabbing_ me. And I—I panicked. I screamed. I started struggling. I don't even remember how I got free—I just remember running across my yard and unlocking the door. I called the cops as soon as I was in."

"Did you get a good look at him?"

"No. And I was too, uh—" She hesitated. "Scared to look out my window to see if he was still out there."

"But they did take the DNA swabs at the hospital?"

She nodded, reaching down to rub the inside of one of her pudgy arms. There was gauze wrapped around it, a reddish brown stain seeping gradually across the white. "Funny how I was so upset I didn't even notice he bit me until later. The hospital says it might be infected—it hasn't stopped draining this whole time. That bastard . . ."

Glancing away, Chris checked the time again. His break was over.

With a groan, he forced himself up and walked slowly to the other end of the hall to throw the empty bag into the small trashcan by the vending machines. Then he started the long walk back up to the S.T.A.R.S. room, deciding to take the route that kept him inside the building the whole way.

Hurrying a bit, he crossed the lobby and into the opposite room. One handcuffed man was being fingerprinted without putting up a struggle, while two others were handcuffed to the bench on the left hand wall.

In Chris's experience, no one was well behaved while they were awaiting booking—they had too much time to think about it, really—but these two weren't even rattling their cuffs. They just sat there, one staring blankly ahead of him, entirely unblinking, the other bent over with his head between his knees, breathing heavily.

Chris sort of hoped this was the start of a new trend.

He jogged down the next two hallways, which were empty thanks to the station being so busy, and stepped out into the room with the staircase. His hand was almost on the railing when he caught something in the corner of his eye and paused.

A few feet away, over by the silver door of the evidence room, stood a man he vaguely recognized. He knew didn't work for the police, but for the city's waste disposal plant out back. He'd seen him hanging around the night watchman on a few occasions, and he thought he'd gotten a memo about him being hired to install some new locks around the station. They were chess themed, or something.

It took Chris a second to find what drew his attention to the man. He was very . . . _still_. From the toolbox on the floor, it looked like he'd been in the process of installing one of the new locks, but now he was stood up and staring into space, arms hanging limply at his sides.

"Hi . . ." What was his name? Timothy? Thomas? Thomas. "Thomas!" Chris called.

For the longest time, Thomas didn't even twitch. Finally, he raised one gnarled hand to his arm and began slowly scratching up and down.

"Are you okay?" Chris pressed, taking a step towards him.

Thomas breathed in deeply through his nose and finally looked at him, bloodshot eyes drifting over without blinking.

"Oh," he said, as if he'd only just noticed him. "Hello."

"Are you okay?" he repeated. "You look kind of . . ."

Thomas nodded. "I'm tired. I think I should go home . . ."

Chris nodded back, giving a small, strained smile as he turned to go up the stairs.

"Hope you feel better!" he called over his shoulder, taking the steps two at a time.

For some reason, he was eager to get away.

.

Claire closed her eyes and moaned as the taste of chocolate chip goodness exploded in her mouth. She let her head hang back, savoring the warmth, the texture, the body and flavor. Each movement of her teeth revealed slightly more of the cookie's mysteries, and by the time she swallowed it, she had conquered it and taken everything it had to offer.

She opened her eyes to find Chris and Wesker staring at her, both looking faintly uncomfortable.

"What?" she asked defensively, even as she slid her spoon back into the giant dessert cookie, scooped up a piece, and lifted it to her mouth. Chris usually didn't like her eating sweets—he was big on health food and exercise and staying in shape—but it was her last night in town so he'd kept quiet about it.

"So, how did Rebecca settle in today?" Chris asked, finally turning back to Wesker.

"Fine," he said, pausing to take a sip of his coffee. "Neither Marini or I had much time to spend with her, but Bravo Team seems to like her. She's bright; she'll learn."

"That's good. She seemed sweet. And Jill's happy to have another woman on the team."

"Vickers doesn't count?"

Chris blinked. And blinked. "Did you just . . . make a joke?"

Wesker sipped his coffee, staring at him impassively over the rims of his sunglasses.

Chris smiled broadly. "_You_ just made a _joke_! He's learning, Claire."

"And I never will again if you don't let it go."

Chris coughed into his hand and cleared his throat.

Giggling, Claire raised the last bite of cookie to her mouth, but stopped just a few centimeters short at a crash in the corner of the room. It was followed immediately by gagging, and Claire looked up just in time to see a woman bent over, vomiting on the floor beside her table. She staggered through the remains of the water glass she'd broken when she jumped up and hit the wall, leaning heavily on it as she continued to heave.

Claire let her fork fall back to the plate, suddenly not hungry anymore.

Chris grimaced, eyes following the woman as she was led into the bathroom by the man she'd been eating with, a hand thrown up over her shoulder to itch the side of her neck. "Maybe something's going around . . ."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Today, I saw this guy who's installing locks in the station—he didn't look too good. But, then again, he's pretty old. It could've been anything."

"Check, please," Wesker cut in abruptly. Claire glanced at him.

Was it her imagination, or he did look a little bit paler than he had a second ago?

.

After spending all day on that goddamn human interest story his editor had forced on him, Ben Bertolucci had been happy to spend the evening engaging his favorite pastime—sitting in the car, listening to his police radio.

Usually, there weren't that many interesting things—drug activity had been on the rise in some of the rougher parts of town, periodically resulting in a few casualties, but the public didn't care about gangbangers shooting each other. Sometimes there were robberies or domestic calls, but nothing, not even the murders in the forest, had generated much radio chatter.

Tonight, however, he could barely keep up. There were calls coming in from everywhere, reports of people needing urgent medical attention and assaults in the street, alerts about missing persons and complaints from homeowners about trespassers in their yards.

The closest report came from Flower Street. Even though his license was technically suspended, given the pending DUI charges, he didn't think a couple streets would hurt, and he was there in a few minutes.

There was a group of people gathered around the front of Arukas Tailor, held back only by the presence of several cops. One was sitting in a cruiser parked haphazardly on the curb, talking wildly into the radio, and in his own car, he heard a request for an ambulance and the Coroner.

Grabbing his camera, he slipped out and started elbowing his way through the crowd, laboriously making his way up to the yellow crime scene tape.

He grimaced a bit at what he found beyond it.

No corpse was pleasant to look at, but this one was . . . _worse_. His face was incredibly sunken, the skin the pale yellow of jaundice. The eyes sat open, irises and pupils covered by some kind of thin white film. His mouth gaped, exposing bloody teeth, while more blood ran down the side of his head from the bullet wound just above his ear.

"What happened?" he asked the man beside him.

"He attacked someone." He nodded in the direction of a woman standing by the police cruiser with a blanket around her shoulders, cradling one of her arms. "He wouldn't stop, so they had to shoot him."

Ben glanced back at the body's teeth. "He . . . bit her, did he?"

"I think."

Biting. Seemed to be cropping up more and more. Wasn't _that_ intriguing . . .?

He raised his camera and snapped a shot of the dead man's face, only to find it being yanked away from him in the next instant.

"No pictures," hissed one of the cops, who, on closer inspection, seemed familiar. Oh, _of course_. Ryman. Wonderful. "No _media_!"

"That's an expensive camera! You can't just take it!"

Ryman opened the back, pulled out the film, and handed him the camera. "There. Now, _leave_."

"Bastard," he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Ryman to hear it. He wasn't really that upset, though—if he could get another roll of film, there would be other photo opportunities tonight.

He'd just gotten free of the crowd when a trio approaching down the sidewalk caught his eye. Wesker, Redfield, and that teenage girl were all dressed casually, like they'd just come from dinner or a movie, and if he hadn't been so preoccupied, Ben would've found it _very_ interesting that Wesker seemed to spend so much time with Redfield outside of work.

As it was, he still walked up, held out a hand (that wasn't taken), and introduced himself, even though he was fairly sure Wesker remembered him. "Ben Bertolucci, _The Raccoon Press_. Do you have any comment on what happened here? Or on any of the incidents taking place tonight across the city?"

"I don't even know what happened," said Wesker disdainfully. "And as I'm not on the clock, it's none of my concern."

"Can I quote you on that?"

Wesker opened his mouth with an immediate reply, only to hesitate. "_Yes_," he finally said, to Ben's shock.

"What did happen?" the girl demanded, standing on tiptoe to try to see.

"A man was shot. He wouldn't stop _biting_ someone. Given the serial killings in the forest, don't you find this strange, Captain Wesker?"

But Wesker was already walking away, studiously ignoring the chaos beside him. After a second, Redfield and the girl followed him.

.

That night, long after Chris and Claire were asleep, Wesker sat listening to sirens in the distance, the phone on the table next to him. After a while, he picked it up and placed a call.

"We have a situation."

.

.

.

Author's Note: So, if this chapter seems a little bit lighter than some of the previous ones, it's because I was listening to my happy playlist when I wrote it. Or maybe it doesn't. :)

I had decided I wanted to post this before RE6 came out . . . which, I guess, I technically am. None of the stores where I am are open yet. XD Though, I can't really say I'm looking forward to it too much, given some plot developments . . .

Ah, the south . . . ever since Deliverance, we've cornered the market on crazy, deformed, incestuous hillbillies. Yet I'm still inordinately proud to be from there. Give Me Louisiana or My Old Kentucky Home. :D

Thanks for the reviews! Let's hope RE6 is good!

-Annastasia


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